Lady of War
by Reikah
Summary: Genderswap AU. How would things be different for the travellers if Kurogane had been born female? Fem!Kuro/Fai het, series of linked one-shots. Ongoing.
1. Would you love me if I ruled the world

So I woke up one morning with an urge to write Kurogane as a girl, and I was curious how that would work, so I sat down and wrote what would turn out to be the first installment in a mini-series of standalone fics. This is the first one. (More notes at bottom.)

I'd like to thank the ever-wonderful Konnichipuu/Rieke/Bottan for drawing Kuro-girl for me here, with bonus Mokona & her favourite hiding place (drawing may not be safe for work, view responsibly!): konnichipuu. deviantart. com/ art/ Kurogane-as-a-girl-267131889

**Rating:** R  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> Kuro/Fai**  
>Warnings:<strong> Genderswap AU, Kurogane's naughty language, and worst of all, _fish_.

* * *

><p><strong>Lady of War, installment#1<br>**_(I could be your girl, but would you love me if I ruled the world?)_

Fai was busy at the stove when the two of them returned home from work, and if he didn't hear the door open and close it was because he was too busy concentrating on the various pots and pans. He'd hoped to have a bit more time to finish the meal before they came home.

Truthfully he felt more than a little queasy - standing there keeping a furious eye on a boiling pan, wooden spatula in one hand and a cloth smelling strongly of garlic pressed tight over his mouth and nose to fight off the overwhelming scent of _fish_, and when Kurogane approached him from behind and spun him forcefully around for a kiss he flinched in surprise before relaxing into the ninja's mouth.

"Kuro-chan," he said, when he was released. "You're back. Good, I'm making dinner, it's going to be smoked salmon with sour cream sauce. On black ribbon noodles, which I haven't tried before, so I'm not sure how it's going to end up."

"You hate fish," Kurogane pointed out, red eyes narrowed, and Fai laughed. "What is this for?"

"It's for _you_," he said. "Since you and Syaoran-kun are working so hard~!"

"Huh," Kurogane said. The ninja's fingers were toying with his hair, and Fai mock-sighed as he felt his hair band being pulled out; he lunged for his lover's wrist and retrieved it.

"Kuro-sama, I'm trying to cook," he said, and was rewarded with a huff of amusement.

"Yeah. You should keep an eye on the food, unless you want it to burn," said the ninja, and bent to kiss him again, breath hot over Fai's throat. Fai become abruptly aware of warm calloused hands on his hips, blunt fingertips wriggling up underneath his turtle-neck, and raised an eyebrow.

"Really? Now? In the kitchen?"

"Mmm," Kurogane murmured thoughtfully, and then nodded in sudden decision. "Yes. You have no idea how you look right now, mage."

"I'm _cooking,_" Fai said with a grin, but one of Kurogane's hands was dragging up his belly, rough and strong from all that swordplay; and when the ninja's thumbnail scraped across his nipple Fai could no longer pretend he wasn't interested. His lover bent down for another kiss, and Fai gave into it, his eyes fluttering shut. Yes, this. It had been a _very long_ day.

"Want you," Kurogane breathed, and Fai hummed, groping wildly behind him for the knobs controlling the gas hobs, flicking them off one at a time. Dinner could wait, but that didn't mean he had to ruin the pans. Kurogane's long fingers undid the buckle of his belt easily, and Fai raised his hands and set about removing his lover's clothing; turnabout was fair play and all.

First things first. "Kuro-sama, close the kitchen door," he ordered, and with a growl Kurogane went and did just that, taking away all that marvellous warmth.

"Happy now?"

"Oh, yes," Fai said cheerfully, hopping up onto the kitchen counter and peeling off his turtle-neck sweater. His bare feet drummed against the cupboard doors as Kurogane pulled a chair across the kitchen tiles and wedged it helpfully underneath the handle; poor Syaoran would probably get the message anyway, but there was no such thing as being too sure. That done, Kurogane came back, boots heavy and scraping against the kitchen tile, and settled between Fai's legs, body a warm sturdy thing that Fai wanted to touch. "Make yourself useful, Kuro-stud~!"

"It's -" A biting kiss to his jaw, "not-" another to his throat, "Kuro-" a third to the sweeping arch of his collarbone, "stud. Idiot."

"Hyuu," Fai breathed, eyes going half-lidded. "No, I can definitely see _that_." Kurogane was wearing a plain leather jerkin with lacing up the front and a pair of hip-huggingly tight jeans; Fai reached out and undid the knot holding the jerkin closed, and Kurogane grunted at the sudden cessation of the tightness there. The jerkin had left marks, and Fai rubbed at them gently with his fingertips; Kurogane growled and bent down to claim his mouth again, teeth nipping and sharp. The ninja hated being babied.

Fai closed his eyes and let himself be tipped back as his lover took a step forward, cursing quietly as large hands fumbled with the zipper of his jeans. "Do you need any help, Kuro-tan?" he asked sweetly.

"_No,_" Kurogane replied huffily, tugging harder. "This button's tiny, what the hell are you wearing, girl's jeans? I just - there we go - shit! Ow!"

"Are you okay?" Fai asked, trying to hide his amusement and put on an appropriately concerned face. He opened one eye and grinned to see Kurogane's intense scowl.

"Your fucking button flew off and smacked me right in the tit," Kurogane complained, rubbing at a small red mark on the slope of one of her magnificent breasts. Fai burst out laughing, which was probably the wrong thing to do judging from how his lover's eyes narrowed.

"I'm sorry, Kuro-sore," he said, trying to look contrite, and she growled at him. "You know, if we ran cold water over it the mark would probably go away."

She glared at him, but he held out his arm, and with a deep sigh she stepped in between his legs again, one hand raised to shove irritably at the mark where the button had pinged her. Fai hooked one leg over her buttocks and Kurogane let him pull her toward him, bending down to bring their mouths together, and he felt her hand come up to card long blunt fingers through his hair. Looked like he was forgiven.

"Kuro-chan, we can't do anything with our pants on," he said sweetly, and she snorted and tugged on his zipper with her free hand, the teeth coming undone; he put his arms around her shoulders and lifted his hips as she dug her fingers into his waistband, peeling his jeans off slowly.

"You need to stop wearing these fucking things," she said with a groan; they were stuck. "Come on - move, brace yourself -"

"But you like it when I wear tight jeans," Fai replied. He batted his eyelashes, and she rolled her eyes and tugged; he slid across the kitchen counter top and instinctively flailed a hand backward to catch himself on something, but his fingers hooked on the edge of the pot with the fish in and then it was all over the floor, the lid rolling away with a clatter and the _smell_... he turned his head sharply to shove his face in his shoulder as she grunted at the water lapping at her feet, ardour extinguished rather mercilessly by that _smell_.

"So much for fish tonight, huh," she said.

"Throw it away," Fai said tightly. "It reeks, Kuro-sama, throw it away."

"You know fish is pretty common where I come from," she said, bending down to pick up the fish with her bare hands, and Fai lifted his face enough to watch the way her breasts moved when she did so. "If you want to come back with me you're gonna have to get over this," she continued, tossing the fish in the trash, "Or we'll _never_ get laid."

"We'll see," said Fai, and smiled at her. She raised an eyebrow at him, her red eyes cool but indulgent, and he hopped off the counter. "Since that was meant to be dinner, I ought to improvise, I -"

"Mage," she said, in that throaty way she had when she wanted him, and he sucked in a deep breath and then expelled it quietly.

"Kuro-sama, I really shouldn't get distracted," he said, picking up the pot and returning it to the cooker, and reached for the mop in the corner to clean up the spilled water; she stepped quickly in front of him, so he slid his hand around the back of her neck and raised himself the inch or so necessary to kiss her.

"Later," he promised, and she subsided with a tightening of her mouth, turning away.

"Fine," she said. "But you had better not be kidding, mage."

"Would I ever?" Fai asked, giving her his most charming smile, and she snorted scornfully and stepped carefully over the growing puddle on the floor.

"It's a shame about the fish," she said, at the door, turning to give him a _look_ from half-lidded, lazily amused eyes, and Fai found his heart beating with how much he loved this woman, this stubborn, loud, brave, _dangerous_ woman. "They say salmon is supposed to enhance male performance."

"Why, Kuro-chan," he said, batting his eyelashes at her, "What are you implying? Are you not satisfied? Given how loud you were last night -"

She blushed and he grinned; victory. They were becoming rarer and rarer as time drew on. "Don't, idiot," she said, "Just... don't."

She closed the door quickly behind her, cutting off his amazing retort, and Fai pouted. She was so _unfair_.

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><p><strong>Concluding notes:<strong> Inspiration for this story mostly came from the song 'Heavy Metal Lover' by Lady Gaga, because I have THE BEST MUSICAL TASTE EVER. *makes victory arms!*

Other than that, I guess I wanted to explore how different Kurogane would be if 'he' had been born a 'she' - and how being female would change her personality, her relationship with Fai, and their adventures throughout TRC!

There will be more in this 'verse - I have several other stories already written covering most of their adventures throughout the Tsubasa story and will be posting them shortly. :D

Hope you enjoyed!


	2. It's in the ABC of growing up

**Rating:** PG-13 bordering on R? DON'T ASK ME, MAN. /hands of despair  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> Still KuroxFai het.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> In which I take a wide look at the start of the manga.

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><p><strong>Lady of War part two<strong>  
><em>(there there baby it's just textbook stuff, it's in the ABC of growing up)<em>

She disliked him as soon as she saw him.

Part of it was her tension and distaste for the circumstances that had brought her here. She had been thrust from her home world, defensive and unsure and still spattered with the blood of the would-be assassins she had killed; her father's sword was heavy across her shoulders and her armour tight around her ribs, and she was hunkered defensively low to the ground. A warrior, every motion deliberate and poised and with her every thought focused toward death - someone else's, for sure.

But he... he had been poised and graceful and tall, his staff in the crook of his arm and the rain slicking his shining hair to his face. He was pale and blue where she was dark and red; he wore an open and affable expression to her surly growl, he knew where he was while she didn't, and he was at peace with their location while she sure as hell _wasn't_.

_Useless pretty boy_, she had thought and curled her lip at him, and nothing about that initial meeting in the rain and gloom of the witch's world had changed her mind. He was frivolous and airy and smiled that useless smile, and he called her _Kuro-kun_ and she just didn't like him.

"I'm not a _boy_," she growled, and he laughed.

"Lady Black looks like one in that armour~" he'd said, and she narrowed her eyes and showed him her teeth, wondering if he even knew how rattled he looked, tension lines faint but clear around his eyes and mouth. Whatever it was he didn't want to go home to had left its marks on him, no matter what he wanted to pretend.

She also didn't trust the witch of dimensions as far as she could throw her, which didn't help any. For all her great power she had a sly smile and there was something off, something _wrong_ about her aura that she couldn't quite pinpoint; almost as if the witch wasn't really a person at all but a reflection of one, moving and breathing and walking around but cold. When the witch demanded her copy of Ginryuu - of _Ginryuu_, her father's sword, blessed by her mother's magics! - she had refused, but the stupid wizard had convinced her to give it up and she wanted to bite his head off.

At least, she thought in those first few days as they explored the foreign world of Hanshin, the other members of the group seemed like decent individuals. The boy was studious and intense and very obviously infatuated with the sleeping princess, who was pretty and tiny and delicate and everything Kurogane was not. Syaoran had the right coordination to learn sword play, but she didn't offer to teach him because she told herself that she wasn't going to get attached.

She needed to get home. She needed to be home, so she could wring Tomoyo's little neck for this stunt and concentrate on her quest for power. She didn't see what she was supposed to learn from a pair of children and a liar, none of whom were even close to her equals with the blade. She didn't want to care too much and so she tried not to, not about the quest or the kids or the fucking pork bun and definitely _not_ the idiot wizard with his stupid smile. Her palms itched every day for the hilt of a real sword, and without one to hand she felt -

(like a little girl again, staring at a sword protruding from her mother's back; like some stupid spoilt kid helpless in the face of danger)

- unsettled.

But even though she told herself to ignore him, the wizard kept sticking out.

Fai proved to be a quick and skilled fighter in Hanshin and by the time they left Koryo she had to revise her initial estimation of him, changing him from a 'total idiot' to 'acts like a total idiot'. There was more to him than just blue eyes and a silly smile, although he certainly liked to pretend that was all there was. He was fast and smart and a decent actor, but she was starting to see past the exterior and he didn't like that, either.

He didn't care too much about her gender and _certainly_ didn't skimp her on the hard work, the lazy bastard, currently sitting on the ground with a tray of iced tea while she fixed their host's roof all by herself in Koryo, and she kept glaring down at him through the partially repaired rafters and fantasising to herself what he might look like dead. It wasn't just the liar's smile that got to her.

He had a stubborn inability to pronounce her given name and instead clung to a whole barrage of nicknames, some more irritating than others. The first time he called her _Kuro-daddy_ she was in the midst of banging together some ceiling beams in the rafters, and she threw the carpenter's mallet at his head hard enough she might have caused some serious damage if she wasn't confident he would duck.

"Hyuu, Kuro-boy is so cruel~" he pouted, raising his glass toward her. "She made me spill my tea!"

"It's KUROGANE, and stop making whistling sounds with your mouth!" she roared back at him and he simply beamed at her, and she told herself that it wasn't worth killing him because of Tomoyo's damn curse. It wasn't. It wasn't. It really wasn't.

Repetition seemed to help.

"Kuro-rin would make a good daddy!" chirped a third, also annoyingly-familiar voice just then, reminding her that the moron wasn't the only one who she needed to hurt; she looked down to see the pork bun and the two kids, fresh from their journey to the market. With a growl she jumped off the roof and landed neatly on her feet, starting to gather her borrowed tools. With any luck they'd found something and could get the girl's feather and go.

"Um, Mokona, Kurogane-san is a woman," Syaoran tried. "They're not usually, um, daddies." His whole face was burning red, and Kurogane folded her arms over her chest and glared at the damn pork bun, which promptly launched itself from Sakura's arms and tried to burrow into her cleavage again while she yelled and tried to fish it out.

"The fuck is _wrong_ with you, pork bun?" she bellowed, holding it at arm's length where it swung backward and forward between her thumb and forefinger and pouted.

"Kuro-daddy's chest is nice and warm," it said, and she was just drawing breath to tell it what she thought of that idea when Fai stepped neatly past her and pried Mokona out of her grip. It fled onto his shoulder and buried its face in his hair with a sob, and he petted it absently.

"There, there," he said, turning away, and she deflated. "I know, Kuro-cleavage is _mean_."

Oh, that was it. "Kuro-_what_?" she thundered, drawing her knife and missing Ginryuu more, and the ensuing chaos bought the neighbours running, convinced a murder was taking place. They almost weren't wrong.

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><p>Perhaps it was natural that as the adults of the group they'd be forced to spend time together. It certainly wasn't by choice that somehow when it came time to split up - for sleeping arrangements, for scouting, for fighting - she ended up with Fai as her partner more often than not. She'd never had a partner, but she didn't think this idiot counted.<p>

Either way, as the worlds passed Fai's mask began to crack more and more, and by the time they ended up in Outo she was seeing great chunks of it flake away as she became aware that there was more to Fai than he let on; a recklessness that pissed her off, a lack of regard for his own life, a desperate fear of something in his past that made him keep his bonds with the group light and superficial which paradoxically made her want to know more.

By the time she put her sword to his throat after a demon attack on Outo's dark streets she could no longer say she cared nothing for his well being.

She picked him up by the collar and dragged him into the bar and, mindful of his ankle, got him a seat at the corner of the room. While he whined about his ankle she leaned against it backwards with her arms folded over her chest, studying his face thoughtfully, and she was so wrapped up in tracking the tiny flicker of emotions he didn't want her to see that she almost missed the singer approaching the microphone.

She was a beautiful woman, the singer, just the right height and busty with long thick hair, nothing like Kurogane. She looked away, remembering something Kendappa had said to her once when she'd been a teenager, teasingly: _I should really order you to stop growing. No man wants a woman twice as tall as he is! Not that that would stop _me.

_Fuck men, then_, she'd replied candidly, and Kendappa had laughed and Souma had looked amused if faintly scandalized and even Tomoyo had covered her smile with her sleeve, and it was something she stuck to as she grew even taller than that, a message hammered home over the years by Nihon society at large: that she was flat-footed and tone-deaf, that she couldn't dance or sing or play a musical instrument, that her manners were beyond dreadful and while her ability to cleave a demon in half with her father's ki attack had made her the pride of Suwa, out in the larger world she was an undesirable mate and an even less desirable wife.

She'd heard it over and over again, and so she decided not to care. If she didn't care, then it didn't matter. She was still the strongest warrior in Nihon, and what did she want with marriage and babies and all that gross stuff noblewomen were supposed to do? Her family and their lands had been destroyed. She wasn't the only heir of a noble family any more, she was an orphan and she knew she would grow strong to live up to her father's reputation, and that was that.

But Fai... there was something about Fai, and when she saw his expression during the singer's performance she thought she knew what it was: loneliness, and a sad acceptance of it. He didn't look like he was wowed by the singer's beauty, and she found herself kind of gladdened by that even as she pushed the thought away. He was an idiot and a liar, and she was a six-foot-four swordswoman who could cut a demon in half and had the muscles to prove it, and she was incapable of the kind of etiquette even rustic nobles expected of their women and she didn't _care_.

She really didn't. Really.

After that things seemed different between them, somehow, although she couldn't put her finger on what exactly it was. He still called her those stupid nicknames and insinuated she was a boy right up until he walked into the tent they were sharing in Yama and saw her without her traditional chest-bindings, the cloth that flattened her breasts and kept them from aching when she exercised. After that the _Kuro-kuns_ and _Kuro-boys_ faded in favour of _Kuro-G-cup_ and _Kuro-endowed_ and other mammary based bastardisations of her name, and if she didn't punch him as hard as she could it was only because she was resigned to it.

And then along came a ruined cityscape and rain that burned and it was about then that she realised maybe she did care, and it sucked.

Suddenly everything changed for the worse.

_-tbc_

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><p><strong>Author's notes:<strong> Another part down! Vamp!Fai incoming, but for now, a brief omake set post-series at some point!

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><p>She woke up later that night, just before dawn judging from the shadows on the walls. There was a heavy weight on her chest, but after this many years she didn't even have to look down to see what it was; just groped blindly until she found what she was looking for, running her fingers through the soft fine hairs at the nape of his neck, and then curled her hand into a fist and pulled her lover's face out from between her breasts by his hair.<p>

"I am not a pillow," she told him, as he blinked at her sleepily. "Keep to your own side of the bed, moron."

He pouted at her, but his eyes were bright with warm amusement. "But Kuro-chan is so _squishy_," he said cheerfully, and she gritted her teeth.

"I am _not_ 'squishy,'" she said, with what she considered to be heroic reserve; it would have been easier just to throw him across the room and have done with it.

"Yes you are," he said, with a quick feline grin, and reached out, cupping one of her breasts in his palm. He gave it a gentle squeeze. "See? Squish~!"

Times were she'd've decked him for that, but that was then and this was now. She released her grip on his hair and flopped back on the mattress with a sigh, and rolled her eyes when she felt him return happily to his favourite resting place, face-down.

Truth be told, it was kind of flattering.


	3. None more cynical

Firstly, I heart Konnichipuu forever; she drew the omake from the last chapter with Fai and his face in his girlfriend's breasts. Find it here (take out the spaces first): konnichipuu. livejournal. com/ 13642. html

Doesn't he look so smug?

**Rating:** Somewhere between PG-13 and R? **  
>Pairing:<strong> KuroxFai **  
>Notes:<strong> Warning, this bit contains vampirism and Fai being _mean_. Poor Kurogane.

* * *

><p><strong>Lady of War part three<strong>  
><em>(all i want, only one, street-level miracle - i'll be an out and out born-again from none more cynical)<em>

She didn't know what exactly it was that drove her to ask the witch for a way to keep Fai alive, but she thought it might be anger. She was tired and wounded and bleeding herself, but fury had sustained her through worse situations and it served her in this one; she fisted her hand in the front of his shirt and shook him savagely, barely aware of the startled movements of the other people in her peripheral vision, her concentration honed in on _him_, pale and weak and on his last legs and he was a fucking _coward_ and she hated cowards but he could be _more_ if he had time, so she let him go and turned to the pork bun, and she made her wish.

As she watched Kamui claw a line across his wrist and then reach out with a talon to draw a matching wound across her own, she thought she heard her father's voice distantly at the back of her mind: _strength is necessary to protect_.

Was this, too, a kind of strength?

She didn't know. She just knew it was _Fai_, who flirted and didn't mean it, who didn't act like she was incapable because she had fucking tits, who lied and was so sad underneath, and she wanted to see what could be. What _he_ could be.

It turned out very quickly that what he could be was an idiot, but she should have known that underneath that smiling exterior was someone afraid and hurt and who would know how to lash out and hurt people in return. _Kurogane-san,_ he called her, chillingly polite, and she wanted to punch the fake smile off his face and do other things, things she didn't even know... so she tossed the blanket at his head, and she walked out, because it was all she could do.

Things continued in that manner in Infinity. She liked the chess game. It gave her a good outlet for her frustration, fighting every day against fresh foes, and he had her back for all he rarely spoke to her and never called her by her nicknames. She hadn't thought she'd miss the stupid things, _Kuro-chan_ and _Kuro-rin_ and _Kuro-bra_ and _Kuro-daddy_ and whatever else passed through his ridiculous head, but she did. She really did.

The vampirism was an interesting addition to their dynamic, and not in a good way. She didn't regret doing it, and she'd do it all over again if she had to, despite the tense, broken gap between them - his sullen and petulant silence - but the feedings forced a level of intimacy between them she wasn't sure she was fully comfortable with. Especially not with the way her heart skipped a beat when he pressed his soft lips against her skin, or the way he met her eyes afterwards, licking blood delicately from his fingertips with a wet red tongue and a golden vampiric eye that said he had heard the change in rhythm, only to immediately and cruelly bid her, "Good night, Kurogane-san."

And that was _before_ she started her monthly bleeding, when he walked around golden-eyed all the time and the princess kept asking him innocently if he was hungry. She could have done without _that_.

She tried to keep herself busy with other matters. The tension between the princess and the new copy of the kid, for instance, or training him; the kid said he had witnessed all her lessons through the eyes of his clone (her _student_, through the eye he had replaced with _her Fai's_) but she made him drill with her to test. He was fast but not as strong as the other one, which made sense; he'd been in a jar for years, by his own admission, and though he knew the techniques he didn't quite have his... clone... predecessor's muscle mass.

When they weren't fighting in the chess games she took him out to the city park and made him duel her until he was so tired he could barely hold the sword, and then she bought him home - carried, in one case - and put him to bed, trying her best to keep him from breaking his heart over the Princess. She didn't think it was working, which was about right.

It felt like the group was falling apart, the easy camaraderie she had never known she liked faded, and she missed it as much as she missed chirping calls of _Kuro-knockers~!_

One night she split a bottle of sake pretty diplomatically between the three of them, her student, the pork bun and herself; she had taken to stealing and hiding every bottle of alcohol the mage brought into the hotel room, and it seemed like a good time to get rid of it. He fell asleep against her side quickly, just like his copy, and she leaned over to the far end of the couch for a blanket left lying there to drape it over him. Mokona hopped into her lap, then onto her shoulder, and she didn't bat it away.

"Kuro-daddy," it said anxiously, "Will things be okay again?"

Kurogane bit back the urge to ask how the hell she should know and instead shrugged as she tucked the ends of the blanket around Syaoran's shoulders. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe not. Get some sleep, pork bun."

"But Sakura is so sad," Mokona said, sounding close to tears itself. "And Fai..."

"Yeah, well," she said. She reached up and seized the walking poached egg by the ears, and then, with a glance at the kid to make sure he was asleep and thus unable to bear witness, tucked it into her tank-top, just over her heart. Mokona made a small noise but quickly burrowed in, and Kurogane let her head thud against the back of the couch and wondered when the group had become like this.

The door to the princess' room clicked open shortly after that, just when she was contemplating dozing herself, and she turned her head sharply to see Fai emerge into the main room. In full black he looked more wan than usual, but Kurogane narrowed her eyes at him thoughtfully. He had fed yesterday and usually needed at most one feeding every three days, but the bones of his face looked a little sharper... yes, she decided, as he raked his blue eye over her impassively, focusing on Mokona for just a second, better safe than sorry. His lip twitched like he wanted to comment, but instead he turned toward the room they shared.

"Hey," she said. "You need to feed."

He paused. "I drank yesterday, Kurogane-san," he said neutrally.

"And you'll drink again today," she said in a tone that brooked no argument, and carefully wriggled out from underneath Syaoran. Fai didn't move, although his upper lip curled slightly as she fished the pork bun out of her cleavage and tucked it into Syaoran's armpit. That wasn't a good sign; it meant he was saving most of his viciousness for behind closed doors. She scooped up her sword belt as she walked past the armchair she had left it on, Souhi's hilt shining on one side, the dagger she used to bleed herself with on the other, and swept past him to their shared room. He followed without a word.

He said nothing as she cut a small wound in her wrist, although his eye changed so fast she missed the transition; one moment it was cold and blue and icy, the next golden and warm and fixed on the shining red of her blood, beading to the surface. She held her wrist out for him and he took it carefully in his long cold fingers, bending his head, and she felt her cheeks heat up as his tongue slid out to rasp softly against her skin.

_Stupid,_ she told herself. _It's just feeding, and he hates you._

She wished she could hate him, too, for his coldness and his cowardice and his stupidity. It would make things easier. It was surprising how sensitive her _wrist_ was turning out to be; or maybe it was his tongue, wet and warm and slightly rough, like a cat's...

He reared back, daubing lightly at her wrist with the tips of his fingers and then turning his palm over critically to examine the red smeared over them, and then raising them to his mouth to suck on. She swallowed and narrowed her eyes, letting her wrist fall limply to her side, and the awkward tension that always followed feeding filled the air, when both of them simply did not know what to say.

"Enough?" she asked curtly, and inwardly sighed at herself deeply. Of course it was enough.

He looked _amused_, the bastard, but it wasn't any kind of amusement that extended as far as his eyes. "Yes."

"Good," she said, and could almost _hear_ the awkwardness creep back into the room, if it had ever left at all. She gritted her teeth and turned away from him, picking up the rag she'd left on her night stand and sitting heavily on top of her bed to clean her blood off her dagger; he stayed standing, watching her thoughtfully.

Normally he went right to bed after a feeding. She didn't even know whether or not he really slept, whether vampires _could_ sleep naturally. He always lay there stiff as a board, facing away from her. She hoped he did; it made her a little uncomfortable to think of him stuck awake in the room with her for hours at a time. This time, though, he stayed standing, long enough that she grew irritated pretending to polish the dagger long past the point where any trace amounts of blood might remain and said instead, "What?"

He tilted his head to one side, his one eye as unreadable as his face. "What you're feeling," he said. "The thing that makes your heart beat like that. It's called arousal, Kurogane-san, and it is highly distracting. I'm going out, and I suggest you deal with it while I'm gone."

"What?" she said, feeling like she had missed a vital part of the conversation, and he paused with one hand on the door handle and looked over his shoulder at her, his eye narrowed. "_What_?"

"You smell needy, Kurogane-san," he told her, with spiteful passive aggression riding high in his voice. "It's not good on you."

He closed the door quietly after him and after a few seconds she threw her dagger at it hard enough the blade wedged in the thick wood. She didn't want to wake the kids by screaming in frustration, after all.

It really would be so much easier if she could hate him.

* * *

><p><em>-tbc<em>


	4. This is no modern romance

*cough* naughty bits in the second half of this chapter.

**Rating:** R for sure.  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> KuroxFai  
><strong>Notes:<strong> Naughty content! Avast! Abandon ship if that not be yer thing, arrrr!

... Sorry, I'll put down the cutlass and the pirate hat now. (Onward, ye scurvy curs!)

* * *

><p><strong>Lady of War part four<strong>  
><em>(well i was wrong, it never lasts, there is no... this is no modern romance)<em>

She woke to the scent of incense and autumn, a crisp scent and both ones she remembered. Perhaps that was why it didn't surprise her to open her eyes and know she was home at last. _Ceres,_ she thought faintly. _We were in Ceres. I killed the king and the world... my arm._

She rolled her head to look at her shoulder, and her nostrils flared at the mass of bandages shielding it from view. Even from this angle she could see it was more truncated than it should be, but that wasn't the worst part. She didn't know what she should have expected when it came to her missing arm - numbness or pain or something in between - but what she got was _nothing_. Not nothing as in a lack of sensation, but nothing as in... She could swear she could feel the futon underneath her missing fingers.

"Welcome home, Kurogane," said a very familiar voice to her right, and she turned away from the remains of her shoulder to see her princess sitting there calmly, her hair in its customary arrangement and compassion in her warm purple eyes.

"Tomoyo," she said, her voice croaking and hoarse in her ears. She attempted to lift her good arm, and found it heavy but cooperative; she groped slowly behind her head for her tail of hair and found it greasy but not noticeably longer. "How long...?"

Tomoyo closed her eyes; there were faint lines across her brow and at the corners of her eyelids. Stress, Kurogane thought, and it was a surprise to see the Tsukuyomi looking anything but perfect. "Two days," she said. "Your companions have been quite worried about you."

"Are they okay?" Kurogane asked, urgently. "The princess - "

"Princess Sakura is still unconscious. I have placed her body amongst one of the great sakura trees outside; the youth named Syaoran is keeping an eye on her. Your magician friend has been here almost every hour to check on you."

"Fai," Kurogane said, and struggled to sit up. She half-expected Tomoyo to tell her not to, but her princess said nothing, just watched her with bright, knowing eyes. "Is he -?"

"Fine," Tomoyo answered smoothly. "I sent him outside so that we could talk. Kurogane, your arm..."

Kurogane looked down at her shoulder and reached out to touch the coverings lightly with her only remaining hand. The wound felt more healed than it ought to have been; healing magics. They didn't come cheap. "That was you, wasn't it?" she said. "In Ceres. I heard your voice."

Tomoyo blinked at her gravely. "Yes," she said. "You were dying from the wound to your side. It was close enough that I could reach you from a dream."

She bit her lip. She didn't remember much of those last moments. Fai, in that bubble that was all that remained of Ceres - his fingers in hers - the terrible resigned look in his eye, the sadness that said he was unwilling but prepared, and then Tomoyo's voice in her ear, the hot sweep of Souhi, pulling him flush against her and throwing her remaining arm around his neck to keep them together as the blood pounded in her ears and he screamed words at her that were lost to the maelstrom around them.

"Thanks," she said gruffly, and Tomoyo laughed, the bells in her hair chiming gently as she covered her mouth with one delicate sleeve.

"So," she said, after she'd recovered, "Have you forgiven me for sending you on that journey yet?"

Kurogane snorted. "Yeah," she said. "I think I get it now. What my dad taught me. I wanted strength so what happened to my mother wouldn't happen again, but... strength isn't enough, is it? You have to have a reason to use that strength. Otherwise it's useless."

"Yes," said Tomoyo softly, and smiled at her fondly. Kurogane snorted and shook her head.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I could have worked it out on my own here," she said hastily, and Tomoyo raised an eyebrow.

"Could you?" she said. "Without the people you've met?"

In her mind's eye Kurogane saw - Syaoran in the Hanshin rain, Sakura's ethereal arms looped gently around Fai's neck, the statues of the two Generals of Yama sitting next to each other, her father lifting a strand of her mother's hair to his face, and Fai. Fai with his hand in his twin's, Fai scrabbling his way up the bottom of that corpse pile in his tower, Fai standing up before Ashura with his own death in his eye and resolve in his shoulders.

Fai ordering her to let go, that the world was collapsing on him and she had to leave him if she wanted to live.

"... Maybe," she said cagily, and Tomoyo giggled again.

"You're so different now," she said, "But you're still the same at heart, Kurogane."

She tailed off and Kurogane touched her fingers lightly to the spot on her forehead where the curse had been placed. It didn't feel any different, but then again, it never had. "This thing... The King there, he said it was a protection charm. Not a curse."

The corner of Tomoyo's mouth quirked up. "Yes."

"Did you see this in your dreams?" she asked, curious. "Is that what you meant when you said I'd lose strength if I killed someone?"

"Yes," said her princess again, and there was nothing in her voice, no clue or hint.

"I guess you were right," Kurogane said slowly. "But..."

She looked out, at the walls of her sickroom. She didn't regret it.

Some of that must have showed, because Tomoyo sighed softly and said, "You found something you valued more than strength, Kurogane. Ever since you came to me I have been hoping for this day."

"Yeah, well," Kurogane growled, but her princess just laughed. She turned her head, the bells in her hair chiming softly, and smiled; it was a fond smile, wistful, and not something Kurogane had seen on her princess' face often.

"Someone else wanted to speak to you today," she said. "It would be rude of me to delay them any longer. Come in, Fai-san!"

This last was said louder than the rest, and Kurogane found herself turning to look at the sliding entrance to the room; when Fai came through her mouth fell open. There was no mistaking the garment he was wearing or the taut, tight look to his mouth. He inclined his head to Tomoyo, but didn't look at her as he made his way over to her futon; the furisode fitted him perfectly and Kurogane wondered suspiciously if Tomoyo had foreseen that they would return together.

Fai came all the way up to the edge of her futon and stepped there, his head bowed, his eye avoiding contact, and suddenly Kurogane's mouth was very dry. She had... her arm, and he... Were they going to go through the silence again? Was she going to continue being _Kurogane-san_?

"... Hey," she said warily, for lack of anything else.

He bared his teeth, still refusing to look her in the eye, and she had just enough time to notice they weren't vampire fangs before his hand clenched into a fist at his side and he swung at her, so fast she was too surprised to duck. He caught her a good _thwack_ on the temple that sent her reeling, and she raised a hand to touch the injury spot, indignantly.

"What the fuck?" she roared, but stopped at the expression on his face, the way his eye (his _clear, blue_ eye) was crinkled; relief and gratitude and something deeper she had only just started to realize was _love_.

"Payback, Kuro-sama," he said, and her heart thudded happily in her chest, a rising beat that made her grin back at him giddily, her stomach doing flips of joy.

"I'm gonna kill you," she said, although her heart wasn't in it; it was reflex, automatic response to those goddamn _nicknames_ that she had missed more than she even knew.

"I think," Tomoyo said delicately, with a small smile on her face, "that the two of you shall get along just fine without me."

If they noticed her exit, neither of them reacted to it.

* * *

><p>They had a lot to say to each other, of course, after that. He sat next to her futon and pushed her back down with a hand on her good shoulder when she tried to rise, and they talked for a long time.<p>

She wanted to tell him about herself and her life. She thought that mattered. She had glimpsed the bat-wing magician, this Fei Wang Reed, showing him images of her past in his memories when he ordered Fai to kill her, but she found she wanted to talk to him herself, too keep it fair. He had had his past given away in excruciating detail (small withered nails torn on impassable walls, two cut down to one) and he sat and listened quietly, the sleeves of his furisode folded precisely in his lap and his eye fixed intently on hers.

She didn't want to relieve those memories. Bad enough the other Syaoran had seen them, in Lecourt; she had pushed them away, pushed them back and she hadn't wanted to see them again, not ever. It hurt her, almost physically, to dredge them back out and show them to him, but she wanted to share that much with this man, and so she talked of those early years for what felt like hours as her voice grew hoarse and the light changed outside.

Kurogane told him about Suwa as it had been in her youth; of her parents, her brave, smart father and her wise, beautiful mother.

She told him about the illness that left her mother's body too weak to bear a child after her, and how her father had decided to disregard tradition gender roles and raise her to be his heir to more than just his lands. She told him about the lessons he'd taught her in the hazy good weather days that only nostalgia could provide, of his pride when she first performed the howling dragon rush of his _hama ryuu-ou jin_, of her own drive to be the best and bravest warrior out there to do her parents proud.

She told him of the day the magician attacked, and she opened the shrine door to see her mother murdered; of her panicked retreat to the courtyard and the tattooed, severed, _familiar_ hand clutching still the hilt of her father's sword. She explained about the rampage she had gone on, cradling that dismembered hand to her chest with one hand and the fury that had consumed her and left room for little else but the rage and hate.

And quietly, ashamed of even the memory, she told him what Souma had done to pin her down, and how little Princess Tomoyo had approached her - all feral bloodlust and shock - and wound her tiny arms around Kurogane's throat in an embrace that did what nothing else could.

"After that I had to be strong," she said. "I thought if I had been stronger then I would never have lost them at all, so I... I worked. I trained. I didn't have time for anything else."

Fai tilted his head, watching her with a half-lidded eye, and then said softly, "What did I do, that you would sacrifice so much for me?"

She snorted. "Don't you get it?" she said, and hesitated. "You... I can't _explain_ it, wizard. Aren't you supposed to be smart?"

He lifted an eyebrow and gave her a wan smile. "Apparently not," he said quietly, and she looked away. She could feel heat rising in her cheeks. She didn't know how to word this; she'd always been fucking terrible at that talking-about-feelings crap even when it was so obvious her _princess_ was dressing him in a handmade furisode and deliberately leaving them alone together because Tomoyo was a matchmaker and a mischief-maker and Kurogane didn't know whether to wring her neck or thank her, because he was... beautiful, in that outfit and that light.

"You're you," she said, stiffly, through gritted teeth. "And you're not all bad."

The furisode fabric rustled as he shifted and she glanced up, flushed and angry because she was embarrassed and anger had been her go-to emotion for so long. He was smiling gently, his blue eye bright and warm in his face, and he caught her gaze and held it as he raised himself up, on his knees, so that their eyes were level, and he was moving closer and her stomach was twisting into knots and her heart was thudding and it was every lonely night in Infinity at once, but _better_ because he wasn't pushing her away anymore.

"Why, Kuro-sama," he purred, his tongue darting out pinkly to wet his lips. "Is that the closest thing I'm going to get to a love confession?"

"Oh, shut -" _up_, she started to say, but his mouth was on hers then and she was happy to let him swallow her words.

His lips were softer than she was expecting, softer even than they had felt against her skin when he drank from her. He kissed her slowly but firmly, and at first she wasn't sure what to do.

Kissing had never featured in her world view much before, but she liked it and so she cautiously parted her lips and kissed back, raising her free hand to curl around his shoulder and support him against her. One of his hands slid to her bare hip, and she didn't even remember having pushed the blanket down but she couldn't deny that she didn't mind at all. There was a slow, shy heat between her legs, and her nipples were tenting the bandages wrapped around her torso, the rough fabric a pleasant feeling although not as good as his mouth; again, no different to Infinity world and his scent on the sheets, only this time she didn't fight her body.

She wanted him. She didn't feel like lying to herself about it anymore.

He broke the kiss first, and she made a small, irate noise at his withdrawal; his eye was a murky, muddy green, torn between blue and yellow, and his pupil was not as round as it could have been. He licked his lips. "Your shoulder," Fai said, and she made a rude noise and curled her good hand around the back of his neck; her palm was wide enough to cover the whole area and she could feel the gentle bumps of his spine against her hand.

"The healers have seen to me and I had some pain-dulling concoction that tasted like the plague," she said, impatiently. "Don't lick it and it'll be fine."

He looked like he wanted to laugh at that, and she found herself grinning at him - freely, unreserved - to encourage him to do so. When he smiled for real, it was like seeing the sun for the first time after growing up in a world of lantern-lights; the corner of his eye crinkled and there was a hint of teeth, and it was less refined than those fake smiles he'd used to distance himself and Kurogane knew then that things were going to go way beyond kissing right now, because she wanted him and so did her body and she could have him and so she _would_.

"What are you waiting for?" she said, breathless and tense with anticipation. She'd never done anything like this and she could feel that odd mix of both excitement and nerves in her belly, mixing with the heat he put there already, and he leaned forward and kissed her again. She took the opportunity to yank out the black ribbon holding his hair out of his face and smoothed her fingers through it, twisting the soft strands between her fingers. Abruptly she remembered how greasy and natty her own was in comparison, and she stiffened.

"What's wrong?" he murmured, against her lips.

She thought about lying to him, and then decided against it. He didn't deserve that kind of hypocrisy. Her fingers played quietly in his hair as she asked, "Are you sure you want me?"

Fai blinked at her, and then his mouth twisted into a grin and he raised a hand in the space between them; when she glanced down at it he flashed his fingernails into claws, and then gently pressed them against her right side. The fabric of the bandages was nothing to the vampiric claws, and they fell away easily, leaving her torso naked in front of him. She resisted the urge to wrap her arm protectively over her breasts or her mutilated shoulder, but his eye was on her face.

"Kuro-slow," he said, amused. "I have never wanted anyone the way I want you."

Kurogane bit her lip. All her life she'd been told that she was too _different_ - too strong, too rude, too mannish, too abrupt, so many things she'd been 'too' of - and yet, here, now... it didn't matter. His eye was bright and there was a heady warmth to his face, and she'd lost an arm for this man and given up her freedom to be his food source and she thought maybe she'd fallen for him long before then. Souma was going to have a field day. "I've never done this before," she said, quietly, and Fai tilted his head to one side.

"Well," he said. "Tell me if I do anything you don't want."

She nodded, and she didn't say what she was thinking, which was: _I just want you_, and he bent his head to her throat, and suddenly she wasn't thinking about anything but more of _him_.

It was sweet and it was slow, and he was good at what he did. When he slipped a hand between her legs and began playing with her she made a small grunting noise of surprise that she immediately disowned, although his long clever fingers were sending short shocky flickers of pleasure through her abdomen; she clenched her fingers on his shoulder and growled at him. It wasn't _enough_, but when he slipped a finger inside her she jerked at how strange and how good it felt and he _grinned_ at her with warmth in his blue eye and well, smug bastard, he had a point.

It still wasn't enough.

She'd had the basics of sex explained to her by an overly gleeful Souma and as far as she knew she was supposed to be laying underneath him, except when she cautiously reached down and seized his wrist - he was fucking two fingers inside her now, and she was wetter than she'd ever been and each slick slide of his fingers was igniting a slow thrumming starburst of _heat_ inside her, and she was so turned on she ached to stop him - and tried to tug him down he just looked at her, baffled. "Kuro-sama?"

"I. I think... isn't this how it goes?"

He was still looking at her in confusion. "I'm not sure," he said slowly. "In Ceres the man went underneath and the woman on top. Would you rather do it the other way...?"

"Does your way work better?"

He shrugged, and she could feel herself scowling; she was embarrassed and so she covered for it with anger. "Well, what the hell am I supposed to do, moron?"

Fai twisted his wrist to lace their fingers together. His were still slick with her fluids, and his smile was brighter than anything she'd ever seen. "Let me..."

He tugged at his obi with his other hand, and his brows drew together as he squirmed; with a sigh Kurogane yanked her hand free and pulled it open for him tetchily. The furisode fell open and she felt her breath catch. He wasn't wearing an underrobe, and his skin was milky and pale in the weak light.

She'd seen naked men before. Hard not to, when you lived a martial life; she'd seen her fellow ninja in all stages of undressed as healers worked on their injuries and she hadn't cared much. She'd glimpsed him naked a time or two before, during their travels; the decision to split the group by age rather than gender meant that she shared a room with him more often than not, and sometimes she'd walked in to find him freshly bathed or showered and wearing... a smile, and then a leer when he noticed her. Those glimpses of his skin had been brief because she'd yelled at him and thrown stuff until he put clothes on.

This was different. Kurogane sat there for several seconds, aware she was staring and not particularly concerned. He was so... _lean_, not an ounce of fat on him, and the muscles of his chest were lightly defined and before she could stop herself she reached out and touched, pressing her fingertips against his pecs and then ghosting them up and down his abdomen, skating a blunt fingernail around one pink nipple just to see what he'd do. He made a small noise of amusement and something else, something throaty, so curiously she repeated the gesture to see if he would make it again. This time he moaned, and she grinned to herself: pride.

Abruptly he moved, leaning forward until his forehead bumped against hers, resting nose-to-nose. It was an oddly intimate gesture, somehow more sweet than his lips against hers. She could feel his eyepatch rough against her eyelash when she blinked.

"Kuro-sama," he said. "This is how we're going to do it." And he told her, and warned her that it might hurt her, and she looked at him oddly and leaned back to gesture at her shoulder. He grinned at her ruefully and she snorted and shook her head. He was an idiot, but... but he was her idiot.

She let him go underneath her, since he seemed more familiar with it that way, and threw her leg over his thighs. She'd seen cock before but it had never been something she gave much of a damn about before now, so she took a few curious moments to play with his, fascinated by its heat and hardness, the softness of the skin there and the surprising heft and heaviness of his balls. He let her, although she was amused and intrigued by the noises he made when she did, his mouth falling open and his chest panting as he sucked in air. There was a need building inside her, so eventually she let him go and shifted her weight over him.

"Kuro-sama," he said, his eye glinting up at her. His cheeks were flushed and his lips pink where they'd been kissing, so she bent down and bumped their noses together for some more. He slid a comfortable arm around her shoulders, his other hand gliding to cradle the bones of her hips. He tasted so good, and she thought she was getting a little better at this kissing thing...

"I want you," Kurogane said gruffly.

"Whenever you're ready," he replied. His eyelashes fluttered as he swept his gaze down. "Kuro-sama..."

"Don't ruin this with your rambling," she warned him, but she was grinning and he smiled back at her with so much affection in his eye it took her breath away. Yes. This. She sat back up and as he began to instruct her she took hold of his cock - so sensitive, it was amazing boys could do _anything_ with this thing to distract them - and she pushed her hips down, guiding it inside her, and watched the way coherency ebbed from him with some satisfaction as it slid slowly... as _he_ slid slowly inside her, perfect and hot and sending warm ebbing throbs of pleasure through her all the way.

She hadn't had much expectation because she hadn't thought about this much before, but Kurogane had, when she thought about it at all, expected it to hurt. She'd expected blood. She knew about noblemen and virgin's blood on the sheets and she had thought she would have to endure. Instead there was a sharp sting, laughable in the face of Souhi sweeping through her flesh, severing muscle and bone and everything else, and then there was...

"Oh," she said. "Huh."

His throat worked as he swallowed. "Kuro-_sama_," he said, in a soft, velvety voice, and she rocked her hips testingly and gasped at how it _felt_.

Kurogane had never thought she'd have this. She'd thought she wasn't good enough for that life and that kind of relationship, mostly because she'd never thought she'd find a lover who didn't care that she could break him in half with her little finger. And though she'd given up to much to and for Fai, she had... she had learned from him and she had taught him, and the man underneath her and in her and hot and great against her was as welcome as he was stupid, and she kind of understood now why she had had to change to get this.

She didn't regret it. It was better than she'd imagined.

Maybe Tomoyo had been right after all.


	5. That I call home

This segment is postseries, & a bit of a jump ahead! I'll probably go back and fill in the gaps, like, later. Or something.

**Rating:** Still R.  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> KuroxFai, Sakura x Syaoran  
><strong>Notes:<strong> SO what do you get if you have an eager boyfriend and a lot of sex and a not-very-good knowledge of contraception? The answer is: SURPRISE.

* * *

><p><strong>Lady of War part five<strong>  
><em>(Your heart is the only place that I call home)<em>

When Kurogane was younger her mother had sat her down and they had had a talk, in which her mother explained plenty of aspects of a woman's life that Kurogane had up until that point never considered. It had been shortly after she started her bleeding, and her embarrassment had been plenty obvious, to her mother's wry amusement. She had learned how to brew certain teas, and how to use the herbs that grew naturally in their country for many things beyond simple cough medicines and poultices, and she knew it was important but she hadn't really... well, she hadn't thought it would ever apply to her.

She sighed and tipped her head back, letting the water of the shower wash over her scalp, and mused about how she really should have foreseen this.

This world was fairly boring, which suited her fine. The technology was adequate - hence the shower, which she was enjoying perhaps more than she ought - and the people were happy enough. It was the third world in a row where she hadn't needed to so much as touch her sword, a situation that vexed her as much as pleased her. Fai openly preferred the calmer worlds; he and Syaoran were out at the local library, taking the opportunity to... obsess over something pointless, she didn't know, and the blond was an idiot and she was _angry_ at him, and it just made her angrier to know that that was why he was at the library.

He probably thought he was being sensitive and fucking in tune with her emotions or something by giving her space. Instead, she kind of wanted to smack him, because he was so damn _insensitive_ sometimes, and...

She sighed heavily and thumbed her wet mane out of her eyes, leaning back and fixing the showerhead above her with a glare. The hot water was doing wonders for most of her various aches and pains, but it couldn't fix the unobservant blond idiot she loved.

(Because she did love him, she knew that, even when he hadn't the brains to put two and two together.)

The whole mess had started because of him. Well, okay, she could admit that wasn't fair of her. It had been _both_ of them in the wide bed of Spirit world, him stretched out on the bed naked and hers as she threw a leg over his narrow hips and guided him inside her with shallow jerks of her hips, loving the way his eyes shuttered in pleasure, how she could do that to him. And... and it had been her idea to do it even though they hadn't had anything, because Mokona was sleeping in Syaoran's room that night and she hadn't wanted to go wake them both up to have that pork bun vomit up one of those little foil wrappers...

Well, it was still his fault for not noticing, she thought grumpily.

By her count it had been thirty four days since then, and she was definitely feeling it. He _had_ noticed how sore her breasts were because he used them as a fucking pillow whenever he could and she hadn't let him do so, but he had accepted her claims that her absent woman's blood was down to a new tea she was trying to stave off this very situation without blinking. Sometimes it amazed her that someone that bright could be that stupid, but she supposed it was a case of not seeing the forest through the trees.

She could tell him. She probably should. But the problem was, she didn't know yet whether she even wanted this... thing growing inside her, because it would change everything, and she didn't... she didn't want to tell him and then decide she didn't. She had been kind of hoping he would notice to take the gods-damned choice out of her hands, but she suspected he would remain stupidly oblivious right up until she started to show, so she had kept quiet.

Her mother had fallen pregnant again several times after she had been born, but her body had been too weak to survive childbirth a second time. She hadn't had to deal with the problem by herself. Kurogane's father had loved his wife more than life itself, and he had been there every step of the way, and they had openly discussed it in front of Kurogane, because they thought it was something she needed to know about being an adult woman and in a relationship.

Kurogane had never thought it would apply to her, but she had listened. She had thought she would never find a man like her father because she wasn't her mother, and then Fai had turned up and he wasn't much like either of her parents but he was... right for her. Sometimes that embarrassed her, because he was, after all, an idiot and a foreigner with dreadful manners and a ridiculous habit of abusing nicknames; but he made her smile, and he made her happy, and she just didn't know.

She blew out a long breath and ran her palm over the flat, taut muscles of her abdomen. It didn't feel any different, but she wasn't a complete child, she _knew_, and hadn't Souma warned her this could happen the morning after she had first slept with him?

"You are gonna fuck up my stances," she remarked into the steamy air of the bathroom, and waited to see if she would experience any sort of squishy maternal feelings for the thing. After a moment, she shook her head and turned the shower off.

She was definitely not her mother.

* * *

><p>The other three members of her strange travelling household returned while she was in her bedroom toweling off, and were about as subtle as a facial rash. "Kuro-chaaaaaaaan~!"<p>

"Indoor voice, idiot," she said as the bedroom door bounced open, and then dropped her towel and recoiled. "The hell is that?"

Fai beamed at her proudly. "Well," he said, "Since poor Kuro-breasts were sore earlier, I thought I'd stop off on the way back and get something to help! It's supposed to lift _and_ support."

He held the cotton bra out helpfully, and Kurogane reminded herself that she wasn't allowed to dropkick him, especially not the way she was right now. "You talked about my breasts with a stranger," she said, icily, and he nodded cheerfully.

"The salesgirl was quite impressed I knew your size off the bat," he said, and Kurogane buried her face in the palm of her hand and told herself that he was trying to be _nice_.

"Give me that," she said, and swiped it. It took longer to put on that it should, and though she could feel how something like it might help, she pulled it off again with a wince. He had moved close, circling her, and she threw it at his face and scowled. "It's too small," she said, turning away to her drawers, and out of the corner of her eye she watched him peel it off and turn it over in his hands.

"Hrm. It's the same size I always get," he said, frowning, and then glanced up with a wicked light in his eyes and his mouth curling in a grin. "Maybe Kuro-sama's poor chest hurts because she's undergoing a growth spurt~!"

"What," she said, deadpan.

He managed to eel his way closer to her, but she slapped his hand ruthlessly away before he could cup one of her tits with it and he pouted and then leaned in and kissed her, lightning quick, on the cheek. She sighed and slid her hand onto his narrow hips, feeling the sharp press of bone there against her palm, and ducked her head to kiss him. He tasted revoltingly like hot chocolate, and the way he melted against her woke a flicker of interest in her belly. Maybe they had time...

"You've been sore for three weeks now," he said quietly, and she jerked back. He was watching her from up close, his eyes so vivid and beautiful. "Are you sure you're okay, Kuro-sama? Even big tough ninja can get sick every now and then."

For a moment she couldn't speak, and then she smiled and cupped the back of his neck, her fingers digging into his soft hair. He was still watching her, so she kissed him. "I'm fine," she said, and added, "Really."

"Is it something to do with that tea you're taking?" he wanted to know, and she huffed out a breath and bumped her mouth against his forehead, less a kiss and more a nuzzle. He was paying attention. Just to the wrong damn things, and she supposed that wasn't surprising considering his upbringing.

"Oi," she said. "I know what I'm doing. I'll be fine."

"If you're sure," he said, but he sounded doubtful. She kissed him again. He smelled like old books and paper, and his hair was so soft... she let her hand slip lower, and then lower than that until he made a pleased _heh_ noise into her mouth. "I really should go start dinner within the hour," he breathed, and she shrugged.

"We've got plenty of time," she said, and stepped away. She wanted to be close to him, and she wanted it now, and the worst had already happened so everything would be fine. She still didn't know what to do about the... about the thing growing inside her, but she had plenty of time yet to think it through, and right now she just really wanted his mouth between her legs, using his clever tongue for something a whole lot less irritating than teasing her. She grabbed a hair tie from the drawer and yanked her hair into a rough ponytail, and then turned to watch the way his eyes roamed her body hungrily. She grinned and held her arms open, quirking an eyebrow.

He made dinner late.

* * *

><p>By the time the earring glowed, she still hadn't made up her mind on the fate of the thing. She refused to think of it as a child or a baby, because it blatantly <em>wasn't<em>, yet, and such words were loaded. The indecision was beginning to take over her life, and Fai and even Syaoran had definitely noticed it; she was increasingly foul tempered and silent, and she kept almost snapping their heads off because they seemed so impossibly cheerful and what did they know?

She felt bad about it. She could just _see_ the expression Tomoyo would make if she knew, although that vision was almost always followed by another one of the outfits her princess would force her into and really she was kind of glad she wasn't home. She tried to make it up to them, to the men in her life, by taking herself off to sulk when she knew she was in a terrible mood, or by doing their share of the chores. They knew something was wrong but they didn't know what, and for the first time since Fai had socked her in head in her rooms in Nihon there was a kind of hesitance between them as he plainly tried to avoid upsetting her. It just made her feel guilty.

It didn't help that she was beginning to have nightmares, which was unusual. She wasn't the type to remember her dreams, and her ninja training had taught her how to centre herself before sleeping to ensure peace and quiet, but now she started to have them almost every night.

They were different from the ones that had plagued her after she had first arrived in Tomoyo's care, a half-feral wounded creature who dreamed of her parents' death; one night she merely dreamed of waking up to find someone had left a red iwata-obi at the foot of her bed, and in the dream she knew she had left it there because she no longer needed it because she was no longer pregnant, and she woke up to find wetness at the edges of her cheeks.

This did not help her mood.

She resolved not to think about it for a good two days, and that evening she made an effort to be normal to Fai, a process that clearly made him suspicious. Their sex that night was angry and hard, and she dug her blunt fingernails into the meat of his shoulder and reflected that this had gone on for long enough.

"Tell me what's wrong," he said, matter-of-factly, after he had toppled her over and pulled out of her. He was lying on his belly, his head turned toward her and his blond hair bright and pale in the darkness, and she growled under her breath.

He didn't blink and he didn't look away, and she eventually sighed and said, "I can't tell you yet, wizard. Soon, maybe. I'm working a few things out."

"Kuro-sama, you've been..." he paused. "You've been different," he said, eventually. "I thought we weren't supposed to be that anymore. What are you hiding from me?"

Under the covers, she caught her hand before it could drift to her stomach, and swallowed. "I know," she said. "Tch. I know, okay? It's... I'm working it out. Just wait, wizard."

He didn't answer straight away, and she could sense the careful way he was watching her; then he pushed himself up on his elbow, leaned over her, and kissed her so gently and so carefully it made her toes curl. "I trust you," he said, softly. "If there's anything I can do, tell me."

_Oh,_ she thought numbly, and nodded. He gave her a slow, warm smile and snuggled down in the covers to sleep, in his usual position with his face wedged into the pillow, and she reached out before she could think and carded her fingers gently through his hair. She couldn't lie to this man, she knew, and she... and she didn't want to lie by omission much longer. She'd have to tell him. She just didn't know when, or how.

* * *

><p>The next morning started badly, which was to say Syaoran thundered on the door before the sun was up. "Fai-san," he called, urgently. "Kurogane-sensei!"<p>

Fai got up and answered it, and Kurogane sat up, wrapping the blanket around her chest in the name of modesty as he pulled on his underwear and opened the door. Syaoran was standing on the other side, looking faintly concerned, and the reason why was apparent; Mokona was on his shoulder with her earring glowing. "Wakey wakey!" chirped the pork bun, and before Fai or Syaoran could react, launched itself across the room in a plain beeline for Kurogane's cleavage; she caught it by the ears almost lazily and it made a whining noise. "Good morning!" it sang. "We've got to go soon!"

"Yeah, yeah," Kurogane grunted. She felt faintly nauseous and was still tired, but this was something out of any of their control. "Fine. Get out so we can get dressed, cream puff."

Mokona strained in her grip toward her cleavage and she shook it. She only let the silly thing rest there on special occasions, and they were so sore lately that no occasion would be special enough. Fai was pulling on his trousers, and Syaoran bowed to her quickly. "We'll head from the roof in twenty minutes," he said, and she nodded to show him she'd heard.

"Kuro-daddy's breasts have gotten _sooooo biiiiig_!" Mokona crooned, and she threw it at the kid through the open door; it went sailing through the air with a faint _wheee!_ noise that had Fai chuckling as he closed the door gently behind them.

"You know you only encourage her," he remarked, and she sighed and flopped back on the pillows, stretching out her legs and arms. He padded over toward her and held out his hand, and smiling crookedly she grasped it and got out of bed. Her own clothing was scattered over the room, so she pulled something clean out of her bags and changed into it briefly while Fai shoved his own stuff carelessly into his. "Kuro-sama, can you do the rest of our belongings so I can make some toast or something? I'd hate for us to travel hungry..."

Kurogane winced. "Nothing for me," she said, "But you go ahead and make something for the kid, wizard."

He paused. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure," she replied, bending down to scoop a pair of his underpants out from underneath the dresser. She thought she remembered pulling these off him the first night they'd arrived... She shoved them in with her dirty laundry bag and swung the strap over her shoulder, and realized he was eyeing her oddly, eyeing her with two golden eyes... "What? Weren't you going to get some breakfast?"

"I changed my mind," he said, shaking his head, and turned away.

It only took them fifteen minutes to get everything prepared, and that was only because Fai kept breaking off from his packing to look at her thoughtfully. The kid was up on the roof when they got there, his bag on the floor by his feet, and Kurogane ditched hers on top of it. "We're ready," she said, shortly, and the pork bun leaped onto her shoulder. Usually she would have swatted it away, but this time she just hmphed and let it sit there.

"Here we go," it said, and jumped up into the air; Fai reached out absently and took her hand and she let him. He was being _weird_ today.

It was a strange feeling, dissolving and then reconstructing, but she was used to it. Closing her eyes helped. Usually the first thing she noticed was the weather, and this time was no exception; heat hit her like a wave, and her eyes flew open to sand, and a town sprouting from the desert, and in the distance the ruins...

"Oh," Syaoran said, and beamed. "_Oh_."

"It's Clow!" Mokona squealed with glee, and bounced off Fai's shoulder and onto Syaoran's head. "Look, look! We're back in Clow!"

They had materialized on the roof of Sakura and Syaoran's building, overlooking the market street; Kurogane headed over to the edge and narrowed her eyes. There was some kind of disturbance... ah. She stood up straight and smiled. "Oi, pork bun," she said. "Over here."

"Is that Sakura?" Fai wondered, looking out beside her at the girl pushing her way through the shoppers, and then smiled warmly and waved. Down in the street below Sakura returned it and Syaoran came to the edge as well, grinning fit to burst. Kurogane eyed him, touched for his sake; she thought he had been through enough in his short life, and his happiness helped hers, too. Was that a parental feeling? She didn't know.

"Princess~! Princess~!" Mokona chirped, so she reached out and yanked it up by the ears.

"Come on," she said, depositing it on her own shoulder. "Let's give the kids some time alone, huh?"

Syaoran flushed gratefully and Fai chuckled, climbing up onto the edge of the roof. "Kuro-sama, we should at least say hello," he said.

Sakura bounded up the stairs two at a time, and when she reached the top she flung herself into Syaoran's arms with such force she knocked them both over. Fai laughed at that, covering his mouth with his hand, and Kurogane grinned despite herself. Mokona bounced up and down excitedly, waving its stubby arms.

"Fai-san, Kurogane-san," Sakura said politely from the floor, and then stood up, pulling Syaoran to his feet. They embraced, rather hard, and Kurogane glanced away politely, pretending not to hear that murmured, "Tsubasa-kun."

"It's good to see you, Princess," Fai said warmly, and Sakura giggled.

"I knew you were coming, I saw it in dreams! Come on, the clock's racing," she said happily, and grabbed Syaoran's hand; he blinked at her in open confusion.

"I don't -"

"You'll see! Come on, all of you!" she called over her shoulder, and then she was racing down the stairs, Syaoran towed behind her looking both uncertain and excited. Fai and Kurogane exchanged glances, then Kurogane shrugged and jumped off the edge of the building to follow them to the ground. She had to admit she was curious.

She dragged them to the palace, which wasn't really a surprise since it was where they stayed every time they came. She didn't let them go sort out their rooms, dragging them straight to the gardens which were full of flowering plants; a luxury indeed, in the heat of the desert. This was no surprise either.

What was a surprise were the sheer amount of people standing there in the courtyard, dressed in awkward finery and staring at the three of them.

"Tsubasa, I don't understand -" Syaoran whispered, eyeing her brother. Prince Touya was standing at the edge of the crowd with his arms folded over his chest and a deep scowl on his face, glaring at Syaoran; Yukito patted him gently on the shoulder. Sakura tossed her hair, and Syaoran's attention returned to her. Kurogane glanced cautiously around their surroundings and made to go investigate, but Fai caught her real shoulder in an iron grip and shook his head minutely.

"It's alright," said Sakura. "I didn't really explain." She turned to the crowd - every important member of the nobility and castle staff Kurogane had met over the years, as well as her family - and bowed deeply. "One moment, please," she said, and returned her gaze to Syaoran. "This is somewhat unconventional, I know," she said, and flushed. "And... And it's very forward. But... now is the best time, I think. I..."

"Princess?" Syaoran asked, mystified, and Kurogane began to have some inkling of what was happening here. She turned to Fai to see him looking smug and nudged him; he shushed her absently.

Sakura dropped to her knees in the heady loam of the gardens, drew in a deep breath, and said, "Syaoran... no, Tsubasa. Would you take me as your bound partner, in the..." she drew in another gulp of air and pushed forward. "In the eyes of the law and my kin, here in the house of my father?"

Syaoran's jaw dropped open, and then he was on the dirt next to her and they were hugging and the sound of applause thundered the air, the King and Queen perhaps the loudest. Fai was grinning like the cat who had gotten all the cream in the world, and Kurogane narrowed her eyes at him.

"How long have you been planning this with the princess?" she murmured, leaning over to put her mouth to his ear, and he smiled at her but didn't reply which was all the answer she needed.

"The princess was quite determined," he said cheerfully, and Kurogane snorted and shook her head, and brought her hands together hard enough her palms stung. Fai snuggled up against her side and said, "That was just the proposal. The wedding comes next, Kuro-chan. The princess has been coordinating this for some time!"

Kurogane shook her head, amused, and Mokona bounced up and down on her shoulder, its small stubby paws banging together as it joined in the applause. Even the Crown Prince was clapping, although he looked like he'd rather have been doing something else entirely.

"You've done stupider things," she said, and he laughed, and while attention was on the kids she bent her head and kissed him, because sometimes he could be so damn thoughtful, and she could admit she liked that about him.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

* * *

><p>The wedding took perhaps half an hour, which surprised Kurogane. She'd never seen a royal wedding back home, but she had known how much work it would take because every year advisors planned one 'just in case' for Amaterasu, although Kurogane privately thought they'd have an easier time winching the sun itself from the sky and wedding it to some politically appropriate partner than getting Kendappa to do something she didn't want to do. She'd always known when the annual barking about weddings began because Souma always grew this tension around her mouth, and they'd left off their bickering and nagging during that time.<p>

It was a nice enough ceremony, seemingly consisting of exchanging rings - Sakura had had one made for Syaoran out of memory and, Kurogane suspected, Fai's help finding a size - and vows to honour and obey each other. Kurogane stood to attention through the whole thing, Fai at her sword-side, and couldn't help but keep glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. His attention was rapt on the kids.

"You okay, wizard?" she asked at the crucial moment, and he flicked his gaze up to meet hers and gave her a wistful, sweet smile.

"Of course," he said. "It's just so strange, to see our kids all grown up, don't you think?"

"All grown up, all grown up!" Mokona crooned, jumping onto Kurogane's lap, and she was feeling mellow enough she put her hand onto its head and stroked it. She felt better now than she had when she woke up, but still vaguely nauseous. Stupid wizard's spawn.

"Tch," she said. "It's about time."

"Fai-mommy and Kuro-daddy should go next," Mokona said, slyly, and Kurogane snorted. Fai raised an eyebrow, smiling.

"We don't really do weddings back home, unless you're someone important," Kurogane said, and Fai nodded agreement.

"Ceres either," he said. "Weddings were for lords and ladies. I went to a few, but... well." He glanced away, his blue eyes bright, and she cautiously touched her fingertips to his elbow to offer him some ground. That got his attention, and he grinned at her, crooked and warm.

"But weddings are fun!" Mokona said. "All those drinks, yum yum!" It bounced at Kurogane's face and she caught it absently, her fingers splayed around its round white body.

"Not in Ceres," Fai said, grinning. "Only one drink, really. Mead. It's made with honey, and... other things," he added at Kurogane's mystified look. "The married couple got red wine, because it was so expensive. No vineyards in Ruval."

Kurogane snorted and poked Mokona in its stomach. "No booze for you anyway, pork bun," she said, severely. "You do stupid fucking shit when you're plastered."

Mokona pouted and turned its eyes on Fai. "Mommy," it complained, "Kuro-daddy is so _strict_."

"She has a point," said Fai, but he rescued it from Kurogane's palm and placed it on his shoulder, stroking the fingers of one long pale hand down one of Mokona's ears. Musicians were setting up shop and he glanced over at them. "The after-party is getting started, and there will be plenty to drink tonight. The princess is fairly sure we won't be leaving for a few days, so you'll have lots of time to sleep it off, I promise."

"Just don't trash our rooms again," Kurogane grunted, and the pork bun bounced off Fai's shoulder over to the tables with another high-pitched _wheeee~_! Kurogane shook her head. "I swear, that thing..."

"Mokona is having fun," Fai said, and smiled. He glanced back at Sakura and Syaoran, who had their fingers locked at the very front of the gathering; Yukito behind them flipped his book closed with one hand and smiled.

"You may now kiss the bride," he said, and Syaoran stooped and did. More applause rang out, along with cheers and cries of advice; Fai's whole face softened.

"They're all doing well," he said gently. "All three of them. We didn't fail."

Kurogane leaned over and took his hand, sighing. "You are aware they're not really our children," she said dryly. "They have their own parents."

Fai grinned at her, sweetly. "But they're as good as," he countered, and Kurogane had the sudden feeling that this... this was the side of Fai their baby would be seeing as it grew up, because... because...

Oh, fuck. Somehow she knew now what choice she would make. Maybe she had always been going to make it, because she was kind of in love with this man, and, well, it was going to happen sooner or later. She closed her eyes and flopped back in her chair with a groan, and Fai chuckled and kissed her cheek.

"I'm going to grab something from the tables, since we didn't have anything to eat," he said. "Then we should go congratulate the happy couple. Do you want anything?"

"No," she said shortly, massaging her temples, and he made an agreeable noise and she felt him getting up.

She waited until she was sure he was distracted before hunching up in her seat, her palm resting lightly across her flat belly, and she sighed. "Well," she said, in a low, slightly grumpy voice, "I guess I'm keeping you." After a moment, she added, "You better not be an idiot like your father."

Sakura and Syaoran were surrounded by other well-wishers when they approached, but Sakura excused herself with a deftness Kurogane could admire and threw her arms around Fai's chest when she realized they were there. "It worked just like you said, thank you so much, Fai-san!" she said, and he laughed and put his arms around her, too, bending down to embrace her back.

Syaoran was beaming like Kurogane hadn't seen for a while, and she scuffed his hair fondly with her palm. Would it be a boy, she wondered? She would know what to do with a boy.

"You looked so beautiful, Princess," Fai said, and Sakura giggled and her eyes tracked sideward to Kurogane, and then widened. It was only momentary, but Kurogane felt rather like she'd been stripped bare in that moment, that Sakura had seen rather more than she should. The Princess looked flabbergasted, her lips parting; and then she smiled deeply like nothing had happened and grabbed Kurogane into a tight hug that she was definitely less than comfortable with. Awkwardly she patted her other princess on the shoulders, and when Fai smirked at her she glared at him.

"Well done," she said, not sure what else to offer her... fuck it, her kids, and Syaoran made a noise suspiciously like a snigger and then hastily disguised it as a cough when she glared at him. "You did good."

"Kurogane-san, we're twenty one," Sakura said, laughing, and let her go. Her fingertips fluttered over Kurogane's belly as she did so, in a gesture that probably looked natural to everyone else, and uncomfortably Kurogane shifted her weight. Sakura smiled up at her sweetly, innocently, and said, "Please enjoy the party, both of you. I imported wine for it from all over the world. I already tried some and it's very nice. It won't harm you as long as you don't drink to excess!"

_It won't hurt the baby if you only have a bit,_ Kurogane heard in her words, and bit her lower lip. Fai and Syaoran hadn't seemed to have noticed; Fai pressed himself against her side and smiled beatifically at Sakura. "Oh dear, my little girl is drinking without me?" he sang, and Sakura giggled.

Kurogane excused herself shortly after that, patting both the kids' heads as she went, and headed over to the tables. Mokona was attempting to knock over one of the wine bottles to get at the contents, and with a sigh she seized it and poured the pork bun out a generous measure into a shot glass, which it happily drained. She took a swig of the bottle and refilled the glass, to the pork bun's delight.

"Kuro-daddy is so supportive," it said.

"Tch," Kurogane said, and put the bottle down heavily. Fai was still talking to Syaoran, but as she glanced over Sakura lifted her head and met her gaze; excusing herself with a touch to her new husband's shoulder, the princess made her way over toward Kurogane, who took herself off to a more isolated spot away from the tables. She sensed she was going to need privacy for this.

"Congratulations," Sakura said quietly as she rounded the tree Kurogane was leaning against. Her ruffled skirts swished over the plant life, and Kurogane grunted awkwardly.

"I could say the same for you," she said. "It's your wedding. Shouldn't you be with the other kid?"

"It's my wedding, Kurogane-san," Sakura said, lightly. "I don't know when you're leaving, but we have a few days together yet, Tsubasa and I. I wanted... I wanted to tell you what I saw. I think it's something your princess would want me to do."

Kurogane hesitated, scuffing her hand through the fine hairs at the back of her neck, and quirked an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"It's a girl," Sakura said. "I... I know you're confused, but I think you've already made up your mind on that score. I just wanted to let you know."

Kurogane grunted, but she couldn't keep her artificial hand from lowering to rest lightly against her belly. Still so early... "You saw that in your future-dreams?" she asked, and Sakura nodded calmly.

"If your princess could still see, I think she would have been the one to tell you," she said. "As it is, I think you will see her again shortly, and she will suggest a name." She picked a tree opposite Kurogane and leaned against it, and smiled. "You're afraid, aren't you?"

Kurogane snorted. "Of course I'm not," she said. "I've faced -"

"- Enemies," Sakura finished. "Things that you can kill. This isn't something you'll be able to get rid of with your sword, Kurogane-san, and... and I wanted to offer you someone to talk to. You spent so much time worrying about being female."

She swallowed. "I didn't," she protested. "The rest of the world did. All those fucking rules about what makes a woman a woman... er, sorry about the language," she added awkwardly, and Sakura giggled, covering her mouth with both her hands.

"In another life I was a mother too," she replied, and Kurogane paused and then nodded. Yes, of course. The clone.

The party was still going on, and dimly Kurogane hoped Fai wouldn't come looking for her. "A mother," she mused, quietly. "My mother was... she was a kind woman, and she was... warm. Princess, how can I be her?"

Sakura cocked her head to one side. "Is that what you're worrying about?" she asked softly, and Kurogane shrugged and folded her arms across her chest, refusing to make eye contact.

The grass cushioned Sakura's footsteps when she approached, but Kurogane sensed it anyway. All those years wound up and tense, a warrior hunting down threats; that didn't go away just because she'd had a few years of comfort and safety. Sakura's small hands folded over hers, and the princess tugged gently, forcing her to uncross her arms and free her chest of its defensive barrier.

"Kurogane-san," she said, and there was a kind of mature firmness in her voice that Kurogane had heard from the clone during that final battle with Fei Wang Reed. "Kurogane-san, listen to me. You can do this. You were there for me, and for Syaoran-kun, and for his parents. You kept us together during that horrible period after... after Tokyo, and I know you'll do great. I love you, and so does Syaoran-kun... and so does Fai-san, more than all of us. If you think you'll be a bad mother, remember that you won't be alone, and... and what you're missing, he can provide. Do you understand?"

She drew in a deep breath, and forced herself to meet Sakura's eyes. They were narrowed slightly in concentration, every inch of the princess' body tense with seriousness. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Yeah, I understand."

"Have you made your choice?" Sakura asked gently, and she could only nod, because she had and she knew she had. A girl. Huh. Sakura smiled so suddenly and brightly it was like watching the sun come out from behind grey storm clouds; the princess squeezed her hands and said, "You'll do fine. Besides... as Mokona keeps reminding us, Fai-mommy is plenty maternal."

That made the corner of her mouth turn up, because it was _true_. The idiot would make a good parent, she already knew that. She tugged one hand free of the princess' and put it over her stomach, and Sakura beamed back at her. Kurogane cleared her throat. "I should... I should probably go tell the idiot, right?" she said, in a voice that was only a little bit raspy.

Sakura nodded firmly. "I think that would be for the best," she said, and well, Kurogane supposed she had a point. It was long past time, anyway.

* * *

><p>When she found the wizard, he was sitting on an overturned log teaching a naughty drinking song to the Crown Prince, his fingers moving like an imaginary conductorﾒs baton as he navigated his way through the twisting turns of a song about a rodent that could not be sodomized in any way. Kurogane had a moment of doubt about the man's parental abilities, and then reminded herself that the last time he was really, truly, honestly drunk - not like Outo country, where being in a video game had affected his tolerance levels - he had refused to do anything because of his impaired judgment, drunk two whole jugs of water to stave off a hangover, and then put himself to bed early. This was just him playing.<p>

"Oi," she said, stepping into their circle in the middle of a refrain about what one could do to a giraffe that could not be done to a hedgehog, "I want a word with you."

Fai blinked at her hazily and then smiled. "Okay," he said. "I was wondering where you'd gotten to."

He climbed to his feet and as he did so she let herself admire his backside and the tight lines of his body. Sometimes she wondered how a man like him had ended up with her; and then she remembered everything they had done for each other. She reached out and seized his sleeve, and yanked him away from the people he'd been entertaining as behind them Touya began to pick up the song where he'd left off.

"Listen," she said, as she towed him over to the far edges of the gathering, half in the tree line. Over his shoulder she could see Sakura rejoining her new husband for a dance; the musicians were playing a slow, sensual waltz for the newlywed's first dance, and she felt marginally guilty for delaying it. "I... I promised to tell you what was wrong with me, right?"

He tilted his head and nodded. He had a tall goblet in his free hand of something dark, and he took a sip as she hesitated. "Kuro-sama has been quite tetchy," he said cheerfully. "Even for her."

"Yeah, yeah," she said, irritably, and sighed. "Oh, fuck it, there's no way to get around this, is there? Listen." She weighed her words heavily, and then nodded, lifted her chin to meet his eyes, and said, firmly, "I'm pregnant."

"I know," said Fai, and she felt her jaw drop open.

It took her a moment to find her voice, and he took another sip from the goblet, his face carefully blank. "You _knew_? Since when, you scrawny blond bastard?"

He laughed. "Well, I didn't _know_ know until now," he said. "But... I guessed. From this morning, actually."

"And when were you going to, I don't know, fucking ask me about it?" she growled, and he licked his lips and glanced up at the sky.

"Never," he said, quietly. "I thought you had your own reasons for not saying anything. Kuro-sama, I... I trust you. I said that, didn't I?" Caught off-guard, she nodded, and he flashed her a quick smile. "I meant it. Whatever you chose to do, I would have been okay with that."

She stared at him, speechless, and he held out the goblet, pressing it into her free hand. When she glanced down she realized the liquid in it was dark, and though she couldn't quite make out the colour, she was suddenly reasonably sure it was a red-purple. "This is wine," she said, quietly, remembering what he'd said about red wine and Ceresian weddings...

He nodded and picked up her free hand, the fake one, wrapping both his hands around it. She couldn't really feel the contact - the false skin wasn't that sensitive - but she could pick up the warmth of his touch. His gaze was completely serious when he said, "This was for me, Kuro-sama. So the wine is for you."

Her chest felt impossibly full, like her heart was too small to contain all the things she felt for him, so she tugged her hand free and thanked him the only way she knew how; she curled it into a fist and bonked him gently on top of the head. "Idiot," she said, and if her voice wavered it was no fault of hers.

"Yes," he replied, and grinned at her sweetly. "Always."

"You're going to teach our daughter to be stupid too, aren't you," she said with a mock-weary sigh, and watched the way his eyes widened at this mention of the baby's gender. He smiled, and his eyes were brighter than usual.

"I'm afraid so," he said, and his voice was barely more than a whisper. "Luckily her mother will be there to provide a better role model, right, Kuro-sama?"

"Tch," Kurogane snorted. "She'll have _two_. You're acceptable even though you're an idiot." After a heartbeat she added, "Besides, I... don't think I'll be the best mother, so... you can do that."

"Kuro-daddy will teach her daughter to be the bravest, strongest warrior ever," he said, and raised a hand, his expression abruptly unsure. "Can - can I...?"

"Go ahead," she said amused, and when he gingerly placed his palm atop her belly she grabbed his shoulder and roughly dragged him toward her. The look in his eyes was one of awe, and it softened his whole face and made her heart flutter against her ribs. "I think," she said, shakily, "That this party isn't one I'm interested in. Maybe we should... head to our rooms in the palace. You mind, wizard?"

He glanced up at her, his whole face so perfect in that moment that she couldn't help but bend down and kiss him right there in the open. He tasted like wine and faintly, of honey, and it was the only sweet thing she would ever enjoy. When they broke apart she kept her eyes on him as she raised the goblet to her lips and drained it in three long swallows; a rivulet of wine trickled from the corner of her mouth when she lowered it, and she swiped it up with her tongue and watched the way his pupils dilated.

"Palace," he said, firmly, and she nodded agreement, and the sounds of the party followed them all the way to their usual rooms.

* * *

><p>She woke up the next afternoon to the sunshine burning through the gaps in the shutters and him sleeping curled against her back. One of his arms was heavy across her side. He'd fallen asleep with a hand over her stomach, and she raised her head from the pillow and pulled the covers back to look at it, at his long pale fingers splayed out against her darker skin.<p>

_Lucky baby,_ she thought, and dropped the blankets. She was tired and she ached, and she felt safe here, so she closed her eyes and slid her hand down her body to rest atop his, and she fell asleep with the knowledge that no matter what, things were going to be okay.

She hoped Tomoyo picked a good name.

* * *

><p><em>-fin<em>

Notes: here is the hedgehog song Fai taught Touya. It's probably not for the faint of heart. Please remove the spaces: www. ie. lspace. org/ fandom/ songs/ hedgehog-song. html

_... oooooohhh but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all~_

An iwata-obi is a traditional stomach wrap worn by pregnant woman in their 5th month+ to provide protection to the baby (and a bit of support).


	6. Against the moon

Another day, another world, but this one is as empty as it is unnerving. 

**Rating:** Still R.  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> KuroxFai, Sakura x Syaoran  
><strong>Notes:<strong> Continues directly from the last installment. This segment contains brief mentions of infant mortality.

* * *

><p><strong>Lady of War part six<strong>  
><em>(poison me against the moon)<em>

Kurogane had never liked the yanking, _twisting_ sensation of Mokona's world-travel, and that dislike had admittedly intensified with her recent condition. She knew it wasn't the white fluffball's fault, but she felt queasy enough at the best of times nowadays, and as soon as they arrived she tottered away from the group for a few seconds and bent over with her hands on her knees, sucking in huge lungfuls of fresh air through her nose to try and settle some of her nausea.

Mokona landed lightly on her shoulder. "Mokona is sorry," it chirped, and she didn't need to look at it to know its ears were drooping. "Mokona tried to keep it gentle..."

"You did fine, pork bun," Kurogane said through gritted teeth. Fai approached her quietly from her other side and rested one cold hand across the back of her neck, and it was strange how he had no healing magic and yet his touch helped. The queasiness ebbed away and she allowed herself to stand slowly, although he didn't let her go. 'Morning' sickness, yeah right. Midwives in half a dozen worlds had told her the morning sickness usually faded after the first ninety days, but she was one hundred and sixteen days along by her count and it showed no signs of abating.

"I don't think we've been here before," said Syaoran behind her, and she glanced up, taking in their surroundings. Tall trees all around them, concrete path under her boots - skyscrapers standing out through the tree branches, tall but not as tall as the ones in Piffle. Concrete and glass, too; one of the more advanced societies but not excessively so. Wearily she groaned. She hated the smog and traffic that went with these kinds of worlds.

Fai whistled under his breath (causing a thick heap of leaves on the side of the path to temporarily form the shape of a bird taking flight before collapsing back into a pile). Mokona jumped from Kurogane's shoulder to his, and he raised a hand to pet her absently. "How nice," Fai said. "We were running low on supplies, weren't we?"

"We're fine for rations," Kurogane said, glaring at him, but he just smiled that sly smile of his.

This was a subject of much contention between them; Sakura had said they would return to Nihon before their daughter was due, but she hadn't said when, and though the two of them hadn't yet decided if they'd stay - much less mentioned it to Syaoran and Mokona - Fai had gone rather manic finding and collecting various toys and baby equipment from the more civilized worlds before they arrived. There had to be enough parenting-related items sloshing around Mokona's innards to fill a whole room back at Shirasagi, and though Kurogane tried to put her foot down sometimes she just wasn't fast enough to stop the idiot from picking up something new and, inevitably, mortifying.

She pushed down another lazy roiling wave of nausea and shuddered abruptly as the wind picked up, blowing leaves down the path; felt like fingers walking up her spine. Cautiously she glanced up the distant buildings. There seemed something almost off...

"We should take a look around," Syaoran insisted. He glanced back and forth along the path. "Do you think these clothes will make us stand out?"

They were wearing their white travelerﾒs garments. They'd been in Watanuki's Japan last.

"Perhaps the cloaks should go," Fai said after a pause, and Mokona obligingly opened her mouth as they unfastened said cloaks, bundled them up, and tossed them down her gullet. Kurogane sighed heavily as she watched hers disappear; she liked having that layer around her to disguise the fact that her belly was beginning to show. It made her feel self-conscious and defensive. Fai must have noticed, because he touched the back of her hand gently with the tips of his fingers, and when she glanced over at him in surprise he gave a small smile so steeped in affection she could feel herself grinning back without any deliberate choice on her behalf.

Goddamn, it had to be the hormones. There was no fucking _way_ she would be this... this _ridiculous_ otherwise.

"Let's go exploring," said Fai. He shielded his eyes and peered up at the sky. "It's about midafternoon, and we need to find something to eat and somewhere to stay."

Kurogane lifted her head, eyeing the faraway skyscrapers. There was something... aloof about them, something that made her uneasy, and she had always obeyed her instincts. "Wait," she said, and Fai shot her a startled glance before his eyes widened slightly; she watched that same wariness settle across his face as he picked up on her mood, and he stepped subtly to the side, putting himself on the other side of the kid.

"What is it, Kurogane-sensei?" Syaoran asked, his eyebrows drawing together. He shifted, glancing around them, and she hesitated as she tried to explain what it was that had triggered her defensive instincts.

"Can you hear anything? Anything at all?" she queried, and he tilted his head.

"Birds," he said. "I can hear..."

"Nothing else," Fai said quietly. "Kuro-sama has it right. I can't hear any people."

His one gold eye was bright and alert, the pupil slitting vertically as he reached for his vampiric instincts, and his blue eye had turned a sort of greenish shade, on the way to joining it. He was tense all over, and he held Kurogane's gaze for a long second; she nodded slowly, reluctantly.

"Cities like this always have noise, we've learned that by now. So why is it quiet?" She ran the fingers of her artificial hand over her flesh palm, but didn't call Ginryuu out as much as she itched for the comfort of her sword in her hand.

Fai frowned briefly. "We won't know just by standing here. We should go take a look around."

"Fine," Kurogane said, and glanced around at her fellow travelers; Syaoran looked grim, Mokona concerned and Fai... Fai looked serious. "We'll stick together," she decided. "Let's go."

* * *

><p>They headed East, away from the sun. Kurogane had Mokona vomit up a compass to be sure. The pork bun was riding on Fai's shoulder, huddled close to him and silent for once. They all felt the strangeness of the atmosphere now that Kurogane had pointed it out, and they'd fallen into their natural scouting formation; wedge-shaped, Kurogane on the left due to it being her right hand she pulled Ginryuu from, Syaoran at point, Fai loping silently at right.<p>

The paths in this urban... garden, if it could be called that - she'd've gone with 'jungle' - were wide and meandering, and it didn't take much debate before they stepped off them. Syaoran had seen a couple of signs around whose writing he could read, but their content was maddeningly unhelpful - 'bike path' and 'turtle pond'.

"This place was landscaped and cultivated," he said, standing on the edge of the body of water labeled 'turtle pond'. "But look... see how overgrown it's gotten? I don't think anybody's been by in a while. Years, probably."

"Maybe this place belonged to the King or Queen of the city and they stopped caring about it?" Mokona offered hopefully.

"Or died," Kurogane said, and Fai shot her a _look_ as the pork bun made a small distressed noise. She cleared her throat and said, somewhat defensively, "It's a strong possibility. Why else would the city be so quiet?"

"I don't know, but we should check outside this garden," Syaoran said, standing up and dusting dirt off his knees. "I saw a signpost along this path directing people to a museum, they're always good sources of information."

"I'm sure," Fai said, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth, and Syaoran grinned sheepishly. His love of museums had led to one or another of his 'parents' having to all but drag him out across numerous worlds.

The museum in question was a tall, graceful building of grey stone, seated at the east end of the odd mid-city jungle. Its entrance was all graceful arched windows and fluted columns, and banners in a variety of colours fluttered from above its raised entrance. Syaoran dutifully read them aloud for the benefit of Kurogane and Fai: "Byzantium, and then at the bottom it says 1261-1557. And that other one says... I think it's a name? 'Ruhlman, art deco?' That one just says 'Picasso'. I don't know what that is."

"What is the museum called, Syaoran-kun?" Fai asked with fond exasperation as they passed a flagpole. A white-and-red-striped flag with a blue box in the corner was fluttering at its tip. Mokona made a small _ooh_ noise as they began to climb the staircase in front of the museum, tipping her small round body back as she tried to stare up at the bulk of the building until she lost her balance and tumbled off Fai's shoulder into his hood; Kurogane reached into it and pulled her out.

"The Metropolitan Museum of Art," Syaoran read off a plaque next to the doors. He reached out and pressed his fingers against the glass of the doors. There was a poster stuck there from the other side, featuring one word in large bold type. Someone had hand-written something underneath it in spidery, wobbly lines. "Um. It says 'closed', but someone's written..."

He leaned forward, scrunching his nose up. "Don't squint," Kurogane ordered. "It's bad for your eyes."

"Kuro-daddy is being protective~!" Mokona sing-songed in her hand, and she sighed deeply and tossed the pork bun lightly at Fai, who caught her in his cupped hands.

"It says 'Captain Trips was here,'" Syaoran finished, sounding baffled. "I wonder if that's a person or a slang term? It seems to imply familiarity... What I wouldn't give for a library, or an encyclopedia..."

"If you had one of those we wouldn't see you until it was time to leave," Fai said. He leaned against the glass, absently putting Mokona back on his shoulder as he cupped his palm around his eye and peered in through the door past the sign. "Odd... A big museum like this, I wonder why it closed...?"

"Does it matter?" Kurogane asked gruffly. "Let's keep moving. No answers here."

"Wait," said Fai, in an entirely different tone of voice. "I think... I think I see someone."

"You do?" Syaoran ducked his head, trying to peer around the poster too. "Where?"

"Behind the desk. A foot..." Fai took a step back, crooking his neck to glance along the doors, and then huffed out a breath. "Kuro-sama?" She narrowed her eyes at him. He gestured at the glass doors. "Could you...?"

She studied his face for a long time. His eyes were both gold and his expression was solemn; he shared her suspicions. With a terse nod she brought her hand to her flesh palm and called upon the magic he'd implanted in her veins; Ginryuu slid neatly forth with no apparent difficulty, and Fai grabbed the kid by the shoulder and tugged him out of the way as she roared _hama ryuu-ou jin_!

The blast shattered every pane of glass in the doors and knocked out some of the windows too, and she lowered her sword and allowed herself a moment of smugness. She hadn't used her family ability for a while, and it felt good to know she had just as much control and power behind it as she always had. Normally Fai would have clapped for her and wolf-whistled her in his teasing way, but instead he ducked his head and carefully stepped into the museum through the gaping door, Syaoran on his heels.

"Keep an eye out for any information you can, Syaoran-kun," he said, the glass shards crunching under his boots. Syaoran bent down, sifting the debris out of the way, and picked up one of the posters, his eyebrows drawing together as he examined it.

"This is very well-preserved," he said, as Fai rounded the desks and stopped. Kurogane pushed past him and stalked across the museum foyer to join her lover to check the state of the person he'd seen.

"So is she," Fai said, and the dead woman was. Her skin was dry and papery; Kurogane knelt down and crooked her head, staring at the way her flesh was drawn over withered limbs. She was lying on her side, one arm curled under her head presumably as a pillow, and she was wearing a salmon-coloured suit jacket and skirt. Leather flatheeled shoes hung off her drawn feet.

"The air in this place," Kurogane said, glancing up at the walls. "It's filtered, like in Piffle. Probably to protect whatever was inside it."

"Of course! President Daidouji told me they run special air filters in Piffle libraries to preserve the books, they must have been doing the same thing here!" The glass rustled as Syaoran made his way over to the desks.

"The way she's lying," Mokona said anxiously. "She looks like she went to sleep..."

There was a bottle loosely clutched in the corpse's skeletal fingers. Kurogane leaned forward and pried it free, then passed it to Fai, who frowned at it briefly before calling out to Syaoran and tossing it over to him. "NyQuil," Syaoran read. "I think it's the name of the contents? It looks like a drug. Let's see, the ingredients list..." He turned it over in his hand and proceeded to rattle off a list of strange words that made Kurogane wonder temporarily if Mokona's translation ability had faded. "It's a decongestant. Like, for a cold."

"Daidouji-san said they had medicines to treat cold symptoms in her world," Fai said. "But if colds were frequent enough amongst the citizens here for them to make and distribute drugs to ease the symptoms, a cold wouldn't have been what killed her."

Kurogane frowned. "She was wearing a badge. See?" She unclipped it from the lapel of the woman's coat and Syaoran came over to take it himself. "That means she was an employee, right?"

"Lisa Brennan, Senior Curator," Syaoran read. "She ran this whole museum. Someone should have _seen_ her before."

"Unless there was nobody left to look," Kurogane said grimly and Mokona whimpered. Syaoran looked concerned, but Fai wore a look that could well have been a mirror of her own. She glanced back to the corpse and paused. Something there was...

She leaned forward to look at the dead woman's mummified face in order to confirm her suspicions. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken, the bones beneath jutting up sharply against her worn skin; her hands were long and similarly withered, but her throat... "Wizard," she said sharply, and Fai crouched beside her. She picked up a shard of glass. "See this?" She pushed the corpse's stringy hair out of the way, exposing the swollen ring of the woman's throat, and glanced at Fai; both of his eyes widened in surprise, the pupils visibly slitting, and he physically flinched away from the woman. Kurogane raised an eyebrow.

"_Plague_," he said.

The word was like magic; Syaoran cried out and recoiled and Kurogane stood upright instantly. They all came from feudal words; she didn't know about the kid but Kurogane had seen plague once before and she remembered it vividly. Fai's fingernails slid out silently, but she saw how they were shaking minutely against the woman's clothes as he reached out to press his fingers against her throat, pushing against the swelling. "Don't -"

"I'm a vampire, Kuro-sama," he said without looking up. "I'm immune. You should be too, thanks to Mokona."

"Mokona is a panacea," the fuzzball whispered. Her ears were drooping. "One of her hundred and eight techniques is keeping her friends free of disease."

"That makes sense," Syaoran said thoughtfully. "Otherwise everywhere we went we'd be getting sick from new world's illnesses, or we'd be introducing new sicknesses that we are immune to but other worlds would never have experienced before."

"Yes." Fai stood up slowly, his gaze staying on the corpse. His fingernails did not retract. "She was probably sick for a while, but she came into work to put up those closing signs. Then she stopped to rest, and she didn't..."

He glanced over at the gaping doorframes.

"We should go back to the forest," he said. "And keep away from the city."

"We're going to need food," Kurogane reminded him sharply.

"I'll get it," he said. "It's fine for me. I'll see what I can find in the city. "You three go set up camp. And no matter what you do, Syaoran-kun, Kuro-sama -"

Syaoran swallowed. "Yes?"

"Don't leave Mokona," Fai said in a voice that brooked no argument. He made his way over to the desk and rummaged on its surface; sheets of yellowing paper, glossy pamphlets, pencils. He retrieved a couple of pens and made his way back to them, then raised a hand. His claws glistened like razors in the light, but Kurogane didn't say anything as she watched him draw spiraling runes of blue fire in the air, streams of words that settled around the pens. His serious expression worried her.

"You gonna be okay?" she asked as he held out one of the pens, grabbing his wrist, and he glanced at her in surprise. His pupils were still feline. He normally had more control of himself than this, she thought, and stroked her thumb along his pulse point, watching as his features softened.

"I think so," he said, and pressed the pen into her palm. "There. It's a compass. Simply hold it like so..." He demonstrated. "And it will automatically point toward mine and vice versa. I'll use it to find you when I have food."

"Mokona has rations," Mokona said anxiously. "You don't have to go."

Fai smiled for her and petted her, then transferred her to Kurogane's shoulder. "We don't know how long we'll be here, Mokona-chan," he said. "We don't know if we have enough food to last. I'll be back as soon as I can, okay?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You better be, idiot," she said, but she didn't think she sounded convincing and he smiled at her crookedly before balancing himself on the balls of his feet and leaning up to kiss her. It was something he rarely did in front of Syaoran, and she tightened her grip on his wrist and kissed him back, mindful of the way her stomach pressed gently against him.

"Whee, Kuro-daddy and Fai-mommy, sitting in a tree -"

Kurogane broke the kiss and let him go, swatting absently at Mokona on her shoulder; Syaoran had his hands in his pockets and was absently staring at one of the windows they'd broken. "Tch. C'mon, kid. Let's go."

She didn't look back as they descended the stairs, Ginryuu clutched firmly in her flesh hand and Syaoran trotting at her side, but even though she couldn't feel it, she was very aware of the magical compass-pen clenched in her prosthetic's fist. It gave her a measure of comfort.

* * *

><p>The urban forest - 'Central Park,' Syaoran said, based off a signpost he found - seemed much more welcoming when they stepped inside it. Maybe it was because there was something terrifying about people dead in what should be their homes, but a natural environment like this - even if it was modified and sculpted - seemed less eerie. There were still animals around; Kurogane caught sight of a creature not wholly dissimilar to the hawks of her own country sitting on a low-hanging tree branch watching them. Syaoran, of course, was in full anthropologist mode despite the lack of humans.<p>

"... industrialized worlds like this one do have a prohibitive effect on natural predators, who are often displaced or exterminated to preserve humanity's place at the top of the food chain," he was saying earnestly. "Most of the worlds we've encountered have been running conservation programs. I wonder if these hawks were a part of that?"

"Who knows?" Kurogane grunted. Her thoughts were on Fai, an entirely different predator. He seemed so sure his vampire blood rendered him immune independently of Mokona, and she hoped so. She remembered how the pair of them had spent a good two weeks in Yama sick as dogs, sweating and feverish with some local illness. Now she thought about it, that was the only time she'd caught sick since Tomoyo had sent her forth from Nihon.

"It's just interesting," Syaoran continued in his best now-I've-gotten-started voice. "That those worlds without people best reveal the effect humanity has on its environments, I mean. Look at how much bluer the sky is than the other early-to-medium industrial worlds we've visited!"

Kurogane crooked her head back and squinted. "Nihon was bluer," she said, and he laughed.

"Well, yes. But still."

For a while he didn't say anything as she made her way along the path, keeping an eye out for a good camping site. Occasionally she dipped into her other sight, doing a sweep for nearby auras, but all she could sense was wildlife. When Syaoran spoke again a good fifteen minutes had elapsed. "Do you miss it?"

"Say what, kid?"

"Nihon. Your home world."

She snorted. "Of course I do," she said. "But it's not going anywhere."

He was watching her gravely. "You must be looking forward to raising your daughter in your home world."

At that she slowed to a stop and turned toward him, and he met her gaze unblinkingly. "I never said that," she said slowly. "The mage and I discussed it, and your wife said we would return, but we don't know yet if we're going to stay. Don't assume things, kid."

"Tsubasa... that is, Sakura thinks you will," he said quietly, and she narrowed her eyes. "Kurogane-sensei, I..." He gestured at their surroundings helplessly. "Is this what you want to be doing always?"

"I said I'd accompany you," she said. "So did the wizard. That hasn't changed, kid."

"I know. I know! And... thank you. I appreciate it. But this life isn't really one for a family, is it?"

She felt something touch her belly and glanced down sharply to see she had rested her artificial hand across it, the enchanted pen-compass resting lightly across the swell there. She didn't remember moving that limb. "Kid..."

"Mokona thinks Kuro-daddy should settle down at home," Mokona said. "With Fai-mommy and the baby and all the other babies!"

"All the - _what_?"

"Mokona thinks this won't be the only one!" The pork bun leaped off her shoulder, bouncing off Syaoran's chest and clinging to Kurogane's hand. "Mokona thinks Fai-mommy will be the _best_ mommy. And that Kuro-daddy will be okay."

"'Okay'?" Kurogane repeated, amused, and Syaoran smiled at her crookedly. "Good dose of confidence there, pork bun."

"It's better than travelling," Syaoran said. "Through dead worlds and danger. I'm sure Mokona and I will be passing through Nihon in the future... we're no closer to finding what we're after, after all." There was sadness in the edges of his mouth and eyes, and Kurogane grunted and dropped a heavy hand on top of his head, mussing up his hair. He winced in protest.

"Listen," she said, dumping Mokona on his shoulder, "The mage and I will talk about it, okay? But let's be honest, between the three of us, we can keep her safe from anything, kid."

His eyebrows drew together and she leaned away from him, letting her hand fall to her side and shifting Ginryuu's weight as she headed down the path. He trotted to catch up with her. "But Kurogane-sensei -"

"I said we'll talk about it later."

"But what about the baby's health? If she grows up never being exposed to any illnesses then she might die the instant she leaves Mokona's company in _any_ world!"

She shot him a glare out of the edges of her eyes. "Don't do this," she warned him, but he ignored her.

"Or - or development. Babies need a large social unit, humans are social creatures. Constantly moving around may affect her personality and make it harder for her to form genuine emotional attachments!"

"_Kid_."

"Syaoran, the languages," Mokona said loudly. "Tell Kuro-daddy about the languages!"

"You too, pork bun?" Kurogane glowered at it, but it did not look suitably cowed.

Syaoran was nodding enthusiastically. "Yes, of course - the languages. Kurogane-sensei, what with everything being translated automatically, maybe she won't ever learn a language at all, because you think you'll be teaching her Nihongo and I'll think I'm teaching her the language of Clow and Fai-san will be teaching her... whatever it is Fai speaks, and all she hears is, I don't know, baby -"

"Shut up," Kurogane moaned, drawing to a stop. "What is with you two?"

"We want mini-Kuro to be healthy," Mokona insisted, and Kurogane's eyebrows drew together. "Mini-Kuro is what we've decided to call her, me and Larg and Watanuki -"

"_Oi_ -"

"I just think you should put her first," Syaoran said loudly and firmly. She glared at him, but he didn't look away. "I'm worried that you're... that you're too loyal, Kurogane-sensei."

She glared at him, her fists clenching around Ginryuu's hilt and Fai's compass. Part of her wanted to deck him for that, but with her hands full it was hard. She didn't want to listen to it anymore, either way. "Changed my mind," she said, through gritted teeth, and turned her hand over, unclenching her fingers so the pen rested on her palm; it jittered and then swung north-east, its nib moving slowly toward north. "I'm going to find the wizard."

She didn't call him _the idiot_ because right now she felt Syaoran truly deserved that nickname more; he was gaping at her. "What? But he said you had to stay with us!"

"Better come with me then," she said, pivoting on her heel and marching as quick as she could in the direction of the vampire, and grinned to herself when she heard him scramble to catch up with her.

Let him try being annoying on the topic of her kid with the speed she'd be holding.

* * *

><p>The street running along the east side of this 'Central Park' was, according to Syaoran and a signpost, named 'Fifth Avenue'. It was wide and shady, lined with both trees and the shiny brightly-coloured metal boxes that were called cars. Kurogane walked north right through the centre of the road, her eyes on the compass pen on her palm and her senses alerted for any sound, but the only sound there was that of the trees blowing in the wind and their own footsteps.<p>

"They would have tried to clean up the bodies," Syaoran said behind her. "That's why we haven't seen any. In the beginning they would have tried to clean up their dead, and then by the time there was nobody left alive who was healthy enough to do that most people would have..."

"Gone home to die," Kurogane finished for him, glancing up at the tall buildings. She'd always thought the people in these 'cities' lived unhealthily.

It was a long road, and Kurogane's feet ached - seemed she got tired easier nowadays, and she was starting grumpily to come to terms with that. She really wanted to know where her idiot wizard was. Didn't seem to be a whole bunch of places here to buy food. The compass on her palm swung gently as she walked, until she stopped by a building near the end to find it pointing dead-on at that building. She craned her head back, peering at it.

"Fai-mommy's in there?" Mokona was riding on her shoulder; it seemed reluctant to leave her.

"Apparently," she said. "Come on."

The bottom door had been locked, but Fai had obviously sliced it open with his claws, and it opened at her touch. It was heavy, though, heavier than a door ought to be, and though she really hated the idea of being wedged into a building with the dead she couldn't find anything in the lobby beyond to hold it open.

"He's somewhere in this building," she said, walking past the shiny metal doors that led no doubt to one of those evil little boxes and instead tugging open another door on the other side of the room that led to a staircase. "Want to alternate floors?"

Syaoran nodded. "I'll take the first floor up."

"Pork bun, go with him," she said, in no mood to put up with either of them, and though they both protested she was insistent. Syaoran left her at the first doorway, and she kept climbing.

She found Fai on the fourth floor. He was kind of hard to miss, sitting in the corridor as soon as she opened the doorway, his back to the wall and his hands on his bent knees. He had his face turned away from her. Opposite him was the body of a little boy, less well-preserved than the corpse in the museum. He was mostly skeletal.

"Wizard," she said quietly, and he lifted his head although he wouldn't look at her. His eyes were glowing faintly gold. Carefully she let the staircase door close behind her and made her way down the corridor. "Wizard, what the hell...?"

"I found him," Fai said; his voice sounded distant and soft. "In that apartment, there." He pointed. "He was... laying on the kitchen floor. His parents were dead in their bedroom, next to each other on the bed."

"Wizard," she said, and then, "Fai."

"They died of the plague, I think," he said, ignoring her. "But this boy didn't. He was surrounded by tins of food, some quite badly damaged. I think he was immune, but..." He shrugged. "He was too small to get out of the apartment. And he didn't know how to get to the tins. There was a chair by the cupboards, you understand? I think he dragged it there and climbed up to get to the tins, and then he started dropping them to break them open. Over and over... but he couldn't get inside."

Kurogane crouched carefully next to him. His eyes were unfocused, his hands gripping his knees tightly. His fingernails at least were normal. "Hey," she said, touching his wrist lightly; he didn't shake her off but he didn't respond either. He was stiff and unyielding under her hand. "Oi, listen -"

"I think he fell," he said, giving no sign he'd heard her. "That was probably what killed him. He fell and fell and fell, and he hit his head... see how the skull there is dented? And so, even though he survived the plague that killed his parents, he died anyway." He scraped his nails across the fabric of his trousers with a noise that set Kurogane's teeth faintly on edge. "He must not have been very scared. At least, not until he fell.

"Perhaps he was when his parents first died. That's always shocking, you understand, the first time you have to be around a body, but with sufficient distraction... like hunger... you move on. It's ruthless, but it's true. No matter how important the bodies are they become just bodies, and you ignore them as best you can in favour of your goal... or use them, sometimes..."

Kurogane stared at him, feeling an icy creep of recognition in her stomach. "Like you in that pit," she said, and his gaze snapped toward her, his eyes wide and gold and lost.

"Yes," he said in a cold distant voice, and then transferred his stare back to the little corpse. "Yes. Hunger changes your priorities. Mine was always Fai, though. Hungry and cold, but Fai was counting on me and I... I said we'd get out, I meant it... I always meant to get him out... The only other living thing amongst the dead..."

She cast a glance around for something to distract him and stopped. Ginryuu's hilt in her hand gleamed silver; a sign. Quietly she changed her sword to her left hand leaned forward and took his chin in her flesh fingers. "You're not there anymore, idiot," she said. "See? I'm here."

He didn't look at her and she gritted her teeth. She wasn't out of options yet, although she didn't think he'd like this one. Slowly, deliberately, she wedged Ginryuu between her thighs and brought the back of her wrist to its carefully honed blade; one quick scratch later - she hissed between her teeth - and a line of brilliant red blood sprung up, the colour seemingly brighter than ever in this dingy charnel house.

Fai's gaze snapped to her injury immediately, and relief tugged a grin out of the edges of her mouth. She hadn't been _entirely_ sure that would work, although she had hoped so.

When they had discovered Fai's vampire blood hadn't ever really gone away, it had been a source of mild annoyance following the demise of Fei Wang Reed, and both of them had given his new condition very little thought. The return of his eye hadn't been sufficient to cure it, but Yuuko had never exactly promised that it would, especially since he'd already traded away the magic of his other eye. Syaoran's clone had strengthened the magic of that one blue eye to the point where he didn't need to feed as often as he had - fortnightly, possibly less depending on how much magic he was willing to expend.

That had changed when he discovered she was pregnant. He'd sworn off her blood entirely, worried about damaging her or the baby, and by now he was _starving_. He was careful still, but his hands shook as they circled her arm, and his tongue was greedy as he swiped up as much of her blood as he could, his eyes losing their glow as he drank and began to calm down. The cut didn't bleed much - it was shallow compared to her usual wounds - but her blood was doing its job, and she watched him with narrow, thoughtful eyes as he licked the last traces of it up with a red, _red_ tongue and then carefully folded her sleeve over it.

"Enough?" she said.

"No," he said. "But I don't want any more."

"Good," she said, and balled her hand into a fist and thwacked him solidly upside the head. "_Idiot_. I should never have let you go wandering."

His gaze was as guilty as it was sad. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think..."

"Yeah," she said, and sighed. "I know. Listen, idiot. Feel this?"

She took his hand and moved it over her pulse, and watched the way blue began to swirl back into his left eye with satisfaction. "Yes," he said.

"You're not the only living thing in a graveyard anymore," she said, and that did the trick; his pupils were round and normal, his eyes their usual shade of mix and match.

"Kuro-sama," he said quietly.

"I'm here," she said. "Syaoran and Mokona are searching the other floors on this building for you, so we should probably go find them. But right now, I'm here. So's the b-" Kurogane swallowed. Even now she felt she couldn't say the word 'baby,' aloud, like it carried some curse, some hint of bad luck. It was a stupid superstition. "The brat," she managed instead, and added, "and you choose whether I mean the older one or the new one."

"You really need to start calling people by name, Kuro-sama," he said softly. His eyes were on her belly, and he reached out a hand to touch; she let him, because, well, the baby _was_ as much his as hers. His palm was warm and light. "So small..."

She pulled a face. "Big enough," she said grumpily, staring down at the way his hand curved. He grinned at her, but it was a flicker-flash of a grin, darting across his face and vanishing soon after. "Listen..."

"In Ceres," he said. "It was fairly common for a lot of mothers to lose children. Before they were born, or while they were small. To plague, or sickness, or accidents. Or sometimes even worse, babies would just... die in their cradles, and nobody ever knew why." She tensed and he drew in a breath. "I kept... I looked at him, at that kid, and I kept seeing our child, Kuro-sama. Is sickness common in Nihon?"

"Not _common_, but yes," she replied quietly.

"I hope she has my blood," he said, with sudden fierceness. "Mage blood would grant some protection from illness. I -" He let go. "This matters to me."

"To me too, mage," she said.

He swallowed and nodded. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I can't... sometimes I just don't. Just don't know what to do. But I want to try, for her and for you."

His gaze was painfully unsure, but it was focused. She sighed and reached out, tucking a strand of his hair behind his ear. "Idiot," she said with as much gentleness as she had in her, which didn't feel like very much at all. "You're already doing fine. Are you going to keep this up for much longer?"

Fai blinked at her. "Maybe."

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Look, mage, you know I..."

She cut her gaze away, squirming. She _hated_ talking. Fai smiled abruptly and raised her arm, pressing his lips gently to the back of her hand in a gesture that wouldn't have been out of place between him and Sakura, and she stared at him in surprise. "Don't worry, Kuro-sama," he said, and set his other hand briefly back against her abdomen; she covered it with her own, pinning it in place. "I know. Thank you."

"Okay," she said, fumbling for something else to say. "Well. Okay then. Just so we're clear."

"We're clear," he assured her, and smiled. "I love you."

"... You too, dumbass," she groaned, and he tipped his head back and laughed. Flushed she tugged her hand free. "C'mon," she said, rubbing at her face - was it hot in here or was she blushing? She really hoped the former. "Let's go find the kid and the pork bun."

He didn't look at the body of the child as they climbed to their feet, and she paused at the door to grab his sleeve. "We'll talk later," she said, and watched as he nodded.

There were things that needed to be said.

* * *

><p>Syaoran didn't seem to realise anything had gone wrong when they retrieved him - on the eleventh floor of the apartment block and looking rather concerned - and was merely grateful to get away. All of them agreed it would be wiser to rely on Mokona's rations until they left the world rather than root around in the homes of the dead, and they returned to Central Park and build a campfire there on the banks of one of the lakes. There was a manmade gazebo there, but all of them kept away from it. The world felt unwelcoming, with its collection of unseen bodies.<p>

Syaoran had found some newspapers stashed in secret places, and he brought them with him to the lakeside, narrating the end of this world to Kurogane, who couldn't care less, and Fai, who was ignoring him as politely as possible. Privately Kurogane thought whoever had run the newspapers was an idiot. They reported that a mysterious illness was coming, but constantly downplayed it.

"To avoid making people afraid, I think," Fai said absently. He had a pot of water going over a campfire and was boiling some vegetables from two worlds ago that were no doubt alien to this world. "If people knew there was no hope they might have panicked."

"Would it have mattered?" Kurogane demanded. "Whatever this bug was -"

"'Captain Trips,' this paper says they called it," Syaoran offered. Kurogane _hmphed_ and waved it away.

"It killed everyone anyway. Would a panic really have changed anything?"

"No," Fai said, peeling one of the strange vegetables with his talons. "But perhaps they were hoping for more survivors. People seldom act until it's too late, and when they do, they are too weak to do anything."

He tossed the peelings away and threw the vegetable into the pot before sighing deeply. His ponytail was loose and several long hanks had fallen out of it; a breeze across the lake sent his hair flying around his face. Kurogane wondered if he was thinking of the people of Valeria, cut down by his uncle, or of Ceres, destroyed by his adoptive father. "It doesn't matter now," she said. "We're leaving soon anyway."

His gaze cut up to hers and he smiled briefly. "We can only hope."

The soup turned out to be pretty damn good, and she and Syaoran ate their fill, although she suspected the kid was deliberately holding back to let her have the lion's share. Fai had poured out a portion for Mokona too, although like him food seemed to be optional for her. After the meal Fai firmly but gently sent both of them to bed, and went to the edges of the camp to sit on a log and gaze out over the water, the ripples sent scudding toward him by the breeze. She joined him after a moment's hesitation.

"How do you feel?" he asked as she sat.

"Fine."

"Kuro-_sama_."

"Nauseous and tired," she admitted. "And my ankles hurt. This is your fault."

He smiled ruefully at that. "Partially. There were two of us there, as I recall." He let out a long breath. "I'm not sorry, though. Well, I'm sorry for not being sorry, if that helps."

"No." She paused and then leaned against him; not _into_ him, but enough that he could feel her presence. He glanced at her sharply and then smiled. "Listen, I wanted to talk to you..."

Fai raised an eyebrow. "About?"

"Kids," she said, and then, "In Nihon." At his quizzical look she cleared her throat. "Look, I... I promised my Princess I'd go home someday, and I..."

"Syaoran spoke to you, huh," he said, his face softening, and she grinned despite herself. "He cornered me two days ago. I didn't want to say anything until you did."

She tilted her head to one side and touched the back of his hand with her prosthetic fingers. "Would you be okay with that, wizard? Going back to my world and... and leaving the kid?"

Fai slanted her a brief smile. "He's not really a kid anymore, Kuro-sama," he said softly. "He's married now, and adult enough to decide if he needs company. That's a 'yes,' by the way. I'll go home with you. And our daughter."

Kurogane nodded. "Okay," she said. She didn't know how to express how she felt at that - that simple reassurance, that they would be together, that she would have _him_ and that their baby would be born on the same world she had been born on, that she would have that... "Good."

"I'm looking forward to it," Fai said quietly, and she huffed and glared at the water of the lake. "I liked your Princess."

She pulled a face. "I _know_ you did," she said in a hoarse voice tinged with grumpiness despite herself, and he threw his head back and chuckled low and deep in his chest. She elbowed him sharply.

"It's okay, Kuro-sama," he said, and turned his hand over to clasp her prosthetic, his fingers twining with hers; she watched the contrast of skin colour there and smiled. "I liked you more."

"Idiot," she said, pleased despite herself. She reached across with her free hand on impulse and slid her two fingers along his jaw, tugging him up toward her, and he came willingly; his lips were dry and scratchy against hers and she could sense his surprise - she didn't always initiate this - but she didn't care. He tasted like salt and blood, and it was kind of gross. She didn't mind the blood drinking, but the after taste was strange, and when they parted she pulled a face and rubbed at her mouth with her sleeve; his eyes softened.

"Sorry," he said quietly. He glanced out across the lake. "I didn't want to have to do that."

She frowned at him. "I'm fine," she said. "And so's the... the thing."

"This time," he said firmly, and she sighed deeply. "I don't want to hurt either of you, Kuro-sama. I can go without as long as I can keep using magic." He touched the skin under his blue eye gently and she folded her arms across her chest. He tilted his head and smiled at her, a bright, sincere smile that matched his bright blue eye. "It won't kill me, Kuro-sama. Didn't I tell you that I wouldn't do a thing like that anymore?"

And well, how was she supposed to reply to that, if not by fisting her hand in his collar and hauling him in for another kiss?

The air was soft and still, and though this world was gone and forgotten, in this small campfire in the middle of the dead city there was heat and there was life, and Kurogane wound her arms around her mate and smiled into the soft silk of his hair, and though she felt his hand gentle on her stomach it wasn't the baby she meant when she thought:

_We made this._

* * *

><p><em>-fin<em>

Notes: Yes, this world was the New York of Stephen King's _The Stand_. :)

Every notice how each installment is longer than the last? I should do something about that.


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